Best no BS motor oil/filter comparison?

Oh sorry, cardboard gasket material. Which is still AFAIC very inferior to a steel cap that is crimped and filled with epoxy.

I see I'm getting a lot of responses about filters which I appreciate, to clarify, I was asking about oil & filters

Care to elaborate on the claim that Mobil 1 scold in the US is no longer a full synthetic. The follow claim comes from the Mobil 1 Web Site:

"Is Mobil 1 with SuperSyn Technology a fully synthetic motor oil?

"Yes, it is. To meet the demanding requirements of today's specifications (and our customers' expectations), Mobil 1 with SuperSyn uses high-performance fluids, including polyalphaolefins (PAOs), along with a proprietary system of additives. Each Mobil 1 with SuperSyn viscosity grade uses a unique combination of synthetic fluids and selected additives in order to tailor the viscosity grade to its specific application."

And be careful when you say "Amsoil" is a full synthetic. Some Amsoil products are, some are not (the XL oils for instance).

Ed

The condition of the drive train on my 1998 Camry V6, that has used synthetic oil since the first oil change, tells me otherwise. I never dreamed of keeping a car this long, and never did before (even other Camrys and Accords).

If I were to sell the car myself, I bet my oil change receipts (all Mobil 1) would fetch me more than the extra amount I spent to use Mobil 1. If I traded it in (not sure any dealer would even take a car that old) I would get more money because the engine is in perfect condition, and would be noted as so in a test drive, which is worth some amount of money.

I will agree, that if you are going trade a car in every 3 years, then synthetic oil may not pay off financially.

I've seen the difference just in replacing valve cover gaskets.

Sometimes I wish I lived in a mild climate instead of being stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on 90-100deg F days or starting the car in the sub zero cold. I remember some of the sounds until the dino oil started flowing and I remember using a paint stripper heat gun to blow hot air into an engine through the oil filler and dipstick tube to get the oil warmed enough so the car would start. I'll it's worth the few extra bucks not to have to deal with those things anymore even if the engine doesn't last a revolution longer than it would have otherwise.

I'm in chicago and the start up difference was quite remarkable when I last switched a car from dino to syn. It's back on dino since for some reason it consumed the mobil one at a rate I don't start it in sub zero cold any more. The car I do have to start in sub-zero cold has been on mobil 1 since it's first oil change.

You might be onto something with the beer part. Otherwise, no sense. Of course it's an arbitrary number. But you have to pick one so the job gets done.

3000 or 5000 or 10000. Take your pick.

--Vic

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

And who knows better than we know, right?

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.

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.

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.

I've never seen an oil filter with crimped metal end caps. What I have seen is oil filters with the filter media potted into a metal end cap. They are very secure (beleive me, I've tried to pull them apart - usually a knife is required). This method is far better than the cheap glue job Fram uses on its filters.Toyota has filters with just thin plastic end caps, but each fold of the filter media is glued shut along the top, which closes off the media, prevent oil from escaping around the edges of the media. Fram doesn't do this. The media is just lightly glued to the cardboard (aka "gasket material") end caps.

To be fair, the pressure in a filter ends to compress the filter elements together, i.e., press on the end caps (flow is from outside in). However the glue job Fram filters use is not very secure and I am willing to bet there are a significant percentage of cases where at least some of the pleats are separated from the end caps, allowing some unfiltered oil to bypass the filter material. Even in good filters, some unfiltered oil bypasses the filter media under some conditions (through the bypass valve). So maybe it is not significant that Fram filters don't appear to have a particularly secure filter media to end cap bond. If Fram filters were particularly inexpensive, maybe I could excuse this. However, Fram filters are not particularly inexpensive, they are just particularly cheaply made. Maybe they meet OEM specs (how would I know, vehicle manufacturers don't publish the actual OEM specs and Fram doesn't publish the actual performance of a particular P/N Fram filter), but why pay as much or more for a filter that is obviously less well made than other filters in the same price range. Is the orange color and "grip paint" on top really adequate compensation for cheaply made guts?

Ed

You are almost certainly referring to

They went longer than 10,000 miles, but it looks like the "study" has been static since 2005.

Ed

I recall Consumer Reports did an oil study maybe 20 years ago. One of their better efforts at actually testing products instead of relying on self-selecting surveys and subjective opinions. They used the cars of a NYC taxi company and after substantial miles tore down and miked the engine internals. As I recall they found no significant differences between oils, and I think one was a synthetic. But I can't remember exactly. It was still a flawed test, since some of the limited number of taxis they used broke down and didn't finish the test, and they had no way to control drivers. Don't believe they even mentioned the latter fact. Wouldn't fit their "scientific" pretense. But at least they tried.

--Vic

The test you are talking about was done in 1996. A copy of the article is available at

Ed

Thanks. Probably the best test I've seen. A real controlled lab test would be better, but cost an arm and a leg. I didn't notice any mention of filters in the article.

--Vic

Of course the probability of 5w30 versus 10w30 reducing wear on your engine is just about the same as the probability of full synthetic reducing wear on your engine, all other things being equal. People that actually think 5 viscosity points make a measurable difference in anything but the most extreme weather conditions amaze me. The whole rush to 5w20 is another one that makes me grin- purely a way to boost CAFE numbers, nothing at all to do with lubricating the engine better. Yet people seem to think that their engines will promptly disintegrate on anything but 5w20, despite the fact that the mechanically unchanged engines used to be specced for 10w30 10 and 15 years ago.

Ford actually went back and 'updated' specs for past engines and recommended 5w20. I stuck with 5W30.