My recent experience with Amsoil

Why would you promote, let alone use snake oil in your Jeep?

The stuff is so bad it will void any warranty you have. If you're out of warranty, then it will just kill your equipment with no recourse.

Gotta love the Spamsoil 'warranty'. "when your engine blows" and the dealer refuses you warranty, you can send the engine to spamsoil and they will diagnose it. If 'they' feel it isn't the oil's fault, you are screwed and out a whopping shipping fee and an engine. LOL!

PT Barnum stuff.

But I guess you don't make a lot of sense anyway so why would you use a real product instead of promoting garbage and foolish ideas.

Most of us on this group actually own and 'like' our Jeeps. Why would we want to purposely abuse them to death.

Mike

86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail >

Most of the synthetic oil brands are certified by the appropriate agency (API)

The certification tests are expensive $125-300K (US) each.... is this why Amsoil refuses to have them certified or do they not pass spec?

Who knows..

For some interesting background information on motor oils see the page at the link below. I'll warn you... it was written by an engineer and is 12 pages long..

In it he describes brands of conventional dino oil that are almost as good as synthetics at a more reasonable price and you are probably already familiar with their names!!

religious discussions again? I had a witch doctor perform incantations on my 76 Goldwing. 350,000 miles on dino oil and running strong. He is Certified by the Tobacco Institute!

I will stick my 2 cents in here, just because. I build engines for three guys locally that compete in high level demolition derbies. All of them run Chevy small blocks. It is very common that these engines run without any water to cool them, or at least no fan because it gets busted off, but usually the radiator is what hits the fan to mess it up. Of course the radiator gets taken out at the same time. These guys run remote oil and tranny coolers, which consist of a stainless box full of cooling tubes and packed with ice before each heat or feature. They also run their fuel through a similar setup with the thought that anything cooler than the engine will absorb some heat as it passes through the engine.

Anyway, when I started doing the engines for these guys, they were having to rebuild their engines after 2 or maybe 3 derbies. The things that usually fail are the head gaskets between the middle two cylinders, and the bearings. Also, many times they were experiencing very accelerated camshaft wear and piston pin seizing, which I believe came from the oil breaking down. these engines get HOT!!! We used one of those temperature guns to check the surface temp of the engine block, and have recorded a temperature of 600F! Oil does not like that, of course.

Anyway, these guys had tried several oils, including Rotella, which seems to get good reviews, especially since it is a dino oil, and many people these days seem to think that any engine will fail if it doesn't have synthetic flowing through it.

I will say that in extreme situations of high temperature, or other extreme conditions, there may be some advantage to true synthetic, or oil with some additives that others don't have anymore. We tried Schaefer synthetic oil in these derby engines, and found something very interesting. The bearing life has pretty much doubled, and the camshaft failures have disappeared, but the latter is probably due to the fact that this particular oil still has the zinc additive, which many oils do not have any more. I have talked to a couple tech people at different cam companies, and they said that cam failures have gone up 20-30% since the zinc has been taken out of most oils. This applies to non-roller camshafts only. The other thing I noticed about this oil is that when it is drained after a day of derbies, it has not turned black like the other oils have. Every other oil we were using came out of the engines looking like it had been run in a diesel for 5000 miles and was black as could be. It also seemed like the oils was much thinner, but I have no scientific proof of that, we just noticed it visually, and to the touch.

Again, this is just my 2 cents, but I can say I'm sold on it, at least for extreme conditions like these.

Chris

----snippy----

That's real special, Bret, but there is no need for some of the language and personal attack you used in the rest of your post.

Earle

They are sleaze bags that sell snake oil products that will void engine warranties.

I have enough dirt on their product and methods that their lawyers came after me with a gag order about what 'facts' I have about their sleaze.

You act like the stuff was legit, it isn't, it's pure snake oil and folks should know the other side of the coin.

Mike

86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's Canadian Off Road Trips Photos: Non members can still view! Jan/06 (More Off Road album links at bottom of the view page)

They tell you upfront how and where warranties are affected. How many warranty claims are disallowed by automobile vendors for using Amsoil where it was changed at a reasonable interrval? My guess, none.

So are Bel-Ray and Klotz snake oil vendors too?

Castrol R will ruin any new car warranty too, guaranteed. Is Castrol a snake oil vendor because they still make Castrol R available? (To be fair you have to get it privately imported in the US because Americans will not read labels.)

Shell, Chevron, and Phillips 66 all make engine oil products that will wreck your engine too unless you have a very unusual application.

The ONLY engines Amsoil has ever ruined, are Lawn Boy two cycles and Continental 520 and 550 cid engines running heavily leaded avgas. They are upfront about it. If you have an old engine with huge mileage (time) on it and switch to any synthetic failing seals are not impossible. That's true of all synthetics. They maybe should be a little more open about this but let's face it, people would not pay attention anyway.

You have a pathological hard on for Amsoil. It's that simple. People with sense who use it where synthetics are appropriate have few problems. If you have a diesel Benz in Minnesota, synthetic oil means the difference between starting and not starting in the winter if your block heater craps out. Amsoil was selling synthetic oil back when no one else was and most Amsoil dealers are basically honest people. But if you prefer to use a different brand that's fine. Just don't blow a load of fermented dog poop all over the place because some idiot somewhere had a problem with it by not using common sense.

Since Amsoil has been so successful, and is such a fine product, you would think that they would be able to afford the certification tests and remove this major obstacle. If it can pass the tests, many would agree that it must be a decent product, but as long as a salesman makes claims based upon a secret independent laboratory's results (The Tobacco Institute?), it is very questionable and looks fishy. Even though it could be a decent product, the lack of certification, the spammy advertising, and the pyramid marketing scheme are all repugnant and will prevent me from using it. Funny how a little outfit like Swepco can get API certification and Amsoil can't.

From what I understand if you change the base you must get re-certificantion. It seems like the cheapest base changes all the time. It is not the cost of certification but the repeated costs of re-certification that causes this stuff to not be certified. It may be great stuff but when they start the shuck and dance about certification I see snake oil..

When I was in college the professor used to say that "An unpublished study is not worth the paper it isn't written on."

Shell, Chevron, and Phillips 66 make aircraft oils that are certified for use in AIRCRAFT.

They do not actively market them to the automotive market and it would therefore not be prudent to test them for automotive certification.

I don't know why Amsoil isn't certified.

In the back of my mind it the nagging doubt that something *might* be deficient in their formulation. I am sure that there are others, like myself, that hesitate for this fact alone.

As for the cost.... well.... I know a guy that discounts his Amsoil products.... thing is.... his price to me for 75w-140 gear lube (delivered) works out to be the same price as paying retail at AutoZone for Mobil 1 and

30% more than paying retail at NAPA for Royal Purple both of which are API certified..

Now Bill...... the key to reading a government study is that they will always give the desired result.... that is how the grants are apportioned.

Indeed.

My father worked for a very reputable company that does contract research. One time they got a contract for to do a study for the EPA and the results came out 180 deg. off from what the EPA wanted.

The EPA refused to pay for the study because they didn't like the results.

Eventually they did pay (it might even had gone to court), but it sure says a lot about the quality of government sponsored "science".

Jeff DeWitt

billy ray wrote:

You should be proud of your father for not fudging the results to give the EPA what they wanted.

Earle

apportioned.

Di his father ever get another EPA contract?

Dad was the most honest man I've ever known.

I don't know what happened between that company and the EPA after that but they are doing very well.

Jeff DeWitt

billy ray wrote: