Best no BS motor oil/filter comparison?

I spent an atypical winter in Little Rock AR, 1957-58, when there was a string of days above zero but below freezing by a dozen or two degrees. I had to get out the hand crank and turn over the engine in my MG TD a few times before the starter would budge it. Not certain that was a function of the oil or the Lucas electrics. We, MG and me, we did not like the cold.

Except for the hole in the muffler, my 1989 Made-in-Japan Toyotl pickup does everything I ask of it, just like the day I drove it home. Laugh if you will. And compost is free to city residents, at the San Diego dump/green center. Save a bundle right there.

Probably the same way as people without basic writing skills ;-)

Hell it's nothing for a GM or Ford to go 20 years or more without engine trouble. I can even show you ones that are FAR over that with no problems. How about a fire engine built on a 62 Ford chassis. Never had anything other than routine maintainance on it. Or maybe the 75 Chevy van we have. It also has never been touched.

I very much doubt that ANY of your vehicles get abused like these rigs do either.

Slip of the finger, no doubt; perhaps this will help: (some call it the angry flower - looks more like a cabbage, to me)

Don't forget fees for shop supplies and hazardous material disposal. I wonder how long a restaurant would stay in business if it added separate line items for cooking oil, seasoning, dishwashing soap, and the fees to haul away the used cooking oil.

Oil getting thicker at cold temperatures isn't a problem, it's a natural property. Some oils however don't suffer as badly from it as others.

If a typo is such a big fing deal to you I suggest you give up usenet.

The rust ate the toyota pickups of that vintage around here. They all seem to get the same massive rust in the sides of the cargo bed. The last one I saw that wasn't heavily rusted was about 5 years ago. The cab was blue and the bed was red.

Man, I did not know a 98 or 97 car is already considered "that long". :) I drive a 99 Maxima, and started using mobile1 synthetic 10w30 around 60k 5 years ago. It's been running fine since, and I do think it makes some difference on long trips that are 2+ hours. I feel with the old oil the engine seems slightly lacking in power after a few hours. With synthetic I don't feel it.

But it could also just be my imagination. Imagine my shock when I finally read the owner's manual and realized I should've been using

I WILL visit the dealer to see how much their filters are. I've been using the PureOne filter from PepBoys...

Raymond

And if you react so to a friendly offer of help, you're going to blow a fuse.

And who knows better than we know, right?

Some people might, but I don't really care. Like the author of Dress for Success said: "People who wear silk shirts don't raises." If someone wants to think I am not very well off, then all the better.

Actually, my 98 Camry V6 XLE only has 75,000 miles on it and a custom installed stereo that I originally spent $2K on, and every time a drive a rental car (which is frequently) I am not very impressed with the new cars. And I do honestly believe that the engine is as good as new, IMO because of the synthetic oil I have used since the first oil change.

If you read the book "The Millionaire Next Door" you will see that not everyone who can afford a new card buys one.

You won't find anything terribly useful. The "cut em up and look at the innards" may be of some value for quality of assembly but there is no way to judge the filtering ability by "looking". All the talk over how the end caps are made seems silly to me.. unless the glue has gaps it really doesn't matter, IMHO, whether it's glued or welded, metal or cardboard, the pressure holds it all together anyway. IF you can get the info on single pass and multi pass filtering efficiency that's about the only useful thing you are likely to see. As I recall, the "dirt" used for that measurement is a standardized "dirt" so it's fair to use that measurement to compare one filter to another. Unfortunately, it won't really tell you how much total dirt the filter can hold. however, if your car is in normal condition it is extremely unlikely it will ever generate enough "dirt" to clog the filter even in 10,000 miles of use. I've pulled a few filters apart and there is practically nothing at all in them. Most are designed to trap particles larger then 10 microns, that size and larger is what damages bearings. If it traps smaller size dirt it just clogs sooner and you are not gaining anything but are losing capacity. When you see that you have "dirty" oil, usually that's the particles in the oil that are smaller then the 10 microns that make it look dirty.

If you want to maximize your changes of using a good filter, just use a different brand each time, that way if you do happen to chose a bad brand you will only be using it occasionally. Otherwise, pick one you feel has a reputation you can trust and that you otherwise feel good about and just stick with it. I used to use fram all the time and never had any trouble at all. Now I usually use Bosch or Motorcraft, no trouble with them either but I like they way they are constructed better (even thought I have no real basis to think it matters in actual use) and the price is pretty much the same for any of them.

Unless you are taking apart used filters and finding the end caps have separated from the media it is meaningless to say there is something wrong with them simply because you can 'peel them apart'. That's my technical reply. Emotionally I agree with you, I don't buy fram because for $2 more I can buy a filter that I "feel better about" even though I have no way of knowing if it's the slightest bit better at filtering or whether it has a higher or lower internal leakage failure rate.

How do you know the crimping process has not torn the filter media and created a small leakage path that isn't getting filled with epoxy that's letting the lethal 10+ micron particles thru? Gluing the end caps on eliminates the potential of torn media from crimping.

Someone did do a test like that with their camaro. they ran some regular oil, Mobil 1 and Amsoil and got the oil tested at regular intervals and tracked teh results. It was very interesting. They eventually ran out of time and money to cointue but they got up to a little over 10,000 miles on the various oils as I recall.

You (and I) got it!

I did a test with "Dan Gurney's All-American" synthetic oil, in the mid-1970s, at Riverside raceway, a 95-degree day, and an S-W electric oil temperature gauge.

Ran one half-hour practice session (full GP course with the mile-and-a-tenth straightaway) early in the morning, noted the oil temperature on the last 'hot' lap. Drained out the Castrol (GTX 20-50 IIRC), replaced the filter with new-same, and refilled with the Gurney synthetic.

Ran the next session, just before noon, day had heated up a few degrees, noted the oil temperature on the last hot lap was 10 degrees cooler than at the end of the first session. Lap times were improved, but not more than what I'd learned to expect as a result of practice and tire-pressure trimming - which may have been in the wrong direction and cancelled or masked any improvement due to the oil, but I didn't think so.

That's it. Close as I can get to "science".

I have no idea if the synthetic of those days would be "full" or blend, or what it might have been in any respect other than it had Gurney's name on it and cost nearly ten dollars a quart.