Best no BS motor oil/filter comparison?

And your reading comprehension, at least on this particular post; was very poor. He distinctly said he used synthetic oil for ten years, but not Amsoil. personally I've used Syntec, Royal Purple and Amsoil and would NOT recommend Syntec under any circumstances.

Most people don't change their oil every 3000 miles, but let's look at your situation.

If you used synthetic oil and changed every 5000 miles, I would guarantee you that your oil would be in better shape at 5000 miles with synthetic than at 3000 miles with conventional. So in your case, you would at least break even.

Can you prove that? I would like to seem a financial analysis of your claim. Don't forget to figure in the cost of a person's time, which in my case is about $60 per hour.

I have plenty to support it, and have posted it in other posts and other threads (many times).

But I am not going to spend thousands of dollars to get "proof" of something that only costs $30 per year and whose benefits are largely intuitive to anyone with any brains.

Great, you have an OPINION. That's fine. You are entitled to it and can use it to determine how you spend your money. But it means nothing as far as whether the duct tape works perfectly fine for the intended use or not.

Unless you are servicing large diesel locomotives, and perhaps some large trucks, the only value to an oil analysis is to make money for the company providing the service or to help determine AFTER THE FACT what went wrong. For the cost of the analysis you could just have the oil changed. There is a reason oil/filter changes are called PREVENTIVE maintenance.

Depends on how you define "lubrication". Most dino oil will have gone out of spec by much past 7500. That doesn't mean it isn't still "lubricating". There are people (stupid ones) that buy a new car and just drive it till the engine stops running, which usually happens around 30,000 to 50,000 miles when it either has burned so much oil there's nothing left to circulate or the remaining oil has gotten so thick it can no longer be pumped. But up until then the oil is still "lubricating".

Many tests have shown synthetic last longer. It's just a fact. They don't last forever and no one has said they do.

The performance of synthetic is better in every way that counts for anything. Whether it's cost effective depends on individual factors for a particular type of operation.

Prove it.

Most engine wear occurs when the engine is started after a cold soak and the oil had drained down to the oil pan. When the engine is first turned over, the only lubrication present is the oil film remaining on friction surfaces until the oil pump starts circulating oil.

I use synthetic oil in 2 out of 4 cars. Obviously, I don't have anything against synthetic oil since I use it myself. The part I disagree on is that using synthetic saves money when following the factory recommended oil change intervals.

Be grateful you don't have to feed my family of big eaters!

This is bad. Because my sneaking suspicion is that in most cases (and the case of the turbocharger is a good example of an exception) people will benefit more per dollar with proper oil change intervals rather than synthetic oil.

Depends on how much you're paying for the oil change (filter+labour) versus the oil itself, but that could well be true.

--scott

The problem is that one oil analysis tells you nothing... you have to keep doing a whole bunch of them to get a good sense for what is going on.

With a big diesel engine that takes a lot of oil and uses an expensive filter, oil analysis can save you a lot of money.

With a typical auto engine, reducing your oil change interval will cost less than doing constant testing. However, if you are the sort of person who wants to always know what is going on inside your engine and who might want warning of possible failure with high mileage, it might be worth the money to you. But that's more a psychological thing.

--scott

This is one of the longest threads I've ever seen. Maybe someone should start a new newsgroup for oil/filters? :-) Dick

Some of the OT threads are much longer.

Just extending the drain interval well within the capabilities of syn. oil will even out the cost.

Wrong. You can't determine an 'optimum' drain interval from one or two tests. You'd have to run many many oil analysis's starting at about 2000 miles up thru perhaps 10,000 miles on the same oil and filter to see how it charts out. And then you'd have to repeat it several times to turn it into something statistically significant. By the time you got done, as an individual user, you'd have just about worn out the vehicle. And you'll never know what's "optimum" until you've run a statistically significant number of vehicles PAST the point of optimality just to find out where it is at. So again, as in individual user with individual driving habits, you would wind up wearing out your car just collecting your data. That's why it's only of value when you have a fleet of locomotives or semi's that are all operating under the same conditions over and over again and you have lots of them to develop your baseline data with. It would probably take years to develop useful info like that if you really wanted it to be meaningful.

You're talking like someone who has no idea what would be required to develop something meaningful.

That has nothing to do with what's optimum, it's just what everyone already knew, that automakers call for change internals that are way too short for today's oil. Nothing is provided showing just what mileage is truly optimum. You are right back where you started.

Someone starts this exact same thread every month or two. There is almost no agreement to be had on the subject and everyone wants to put in their two cents. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go change my oil. I use one quart of Royal Purple, 1 qt of Mobile One, 1 qt of Walmart blue label, and 1 quart of Marvel Mystery oil. For a filter I use an Amsoiled bypass filter mounted in the trunk to provide some cooling. For the element I use Charmin 12 ply toilet paper, with the center tube removed of course.

Let's face it Ray, you disagree with everything I have ever posted on this forum, for reasons that have nothing to do with the substance of my posts. You previously posted that you use synthetic is all 3 or your cars, but obviously things have changed since then (number of cars has changed, and number that you synthetic in).

No one knows for sure how much synthetic oil will save you, if any. You could recoup some or all of the cost if you sold the car yourself, and provided receipts that showed you always used synthetic for every oil change. You might get 1% better gas mileage. You might avoid a repair that would have otherwise been necessary. It is hard to say.

I have more liability insurance than the state requires (hundreds of thousands more). Do I need that much insurance? Will I save money by having more insurance? Probably not, but it you never know. I pay a lot more for the extra liability insurance than I do for the synthetic oil. In fact, I pay more money for Twinkies every year (which I definitely don't need) than I pay for synthetic oil. According to Wikipedia, there was $61 billion USD spent worldwide on bottled water in 2006, and people are complaining that I am wasting $30 per year on synthetic oil?

$30 extra per year for synthetic oil is very cheap insurance IMO. Admittedly, if you only have your car for 3 years and trade it in, or it goes back to dealer after the lease expires, then maybe it will not pay off. But debating about that small amount of money is ridiculous IMO.

Oil analysis.

That's too much work. It's almost time for my own annual oil change, but I'll just take the cars to the Grease 'n' Go and let them put in whatever it is that they have.

dwight