Synthetic oil offer no advantages

[Genie47]

http://p083.ezboard.com/ffjr1300ownersasso...picID=536.topic

 

Read the posts by jestel. He is a GM engineer. Pretty valid points. Draw your own conclusions.

 

What views do you have on this?

[Trex101]

It seem like a good additives is actually more important than the base stock for normal OCI useage. But i think that Syn do have it's nich for the high temp stability and oxidiation.

When i think of top notch additives package, why did Schaeffers keep coming to my mind....

Edited April 16, 2005 by Trex101

[Elantrahatch]

The poster of the thread do back his/her stand with very convicing facts. On most levels, I will have to agree with the poster.

 

I also change my oil before hitting 8K..

[Ferrariz]

very informative

[King]

doesn't matter what u use,, we still

[Genie47]

But when synthetics are about the same price as dino oil, I buy synthetic. It all boils down to the cost. RP's package is pretty robust. The moly did make a bit of a difference for my case.

[Lukie102]

my FC stays the same from beginning until now (approx 17k km). now using 5w30 RP, previously was cxxxxxe 10w40. shall see what mobil 1 can bring me.....

 

oh...FC ranging from 12km/l to 14km/l. best was 15km/l but is unable to attain since the one time.

[Octopus]

IMHO, I think most of the Japanese cars in S'pore have rather small oil sump; around 3+ litres. Comparing this small oil sump capacity to the America cars where their oil sump usually exceed >4 litres, extended OCI seems unwise for cars with small oil sump. Combustion contamination will make the engine oil saturated sooner, even with synthetic oil.

[Jamesgetz]

thx Genie, very good read. u never fail to impress me with your wealth of interesting forum threads and knowledge

 

 

Like I said, the synthetics are excellent products. You certainly are not going to hurt anything using them... Just be aware that in most all conventional engines in cars and street bikes the use of synthetics is just not required. The areas that synthetics are "better" is far outside the normal operating range of the oil so that area or advantage is just not used nor needed.

 

My main reason for posting on this thread was not to run down synthetics at all...just make sure that people understand that the idea of extended drain intervals with synthetics is not really true and not something that they should be fooled into believeing. "Extended" means a lot of different things to different people. If someone reads Amsoils BS and thinks that they can run their FJR 25K between oil changes they are being sadly mislead. In explaining why synthetics do not necessarily provide addtional service life it is hard to not touch on their limitations and compare them to conventional oil.

i share the same view with u. the price diff between syn and min oils are just too small nowadays, esp with those crazy Carrefour and Giant offers and more importantly, it's hard to find min oils of 30wt (if they even exist) in S'pore. min oils tend to be 50wt which are too darn thick for my liking

 

anyway, the author's view is more or less summarized in the quote above. M1, Amsoil or others brands of syn oil are good but caveat emptor about the validity of extended drain interval for your ride. what works under ideal test conditions may not be applicable elsewhere. anyway, with the abundance of cheap syn oil, i will still drain it at 10K OCI even if i know the oil can last longer

[Wbucket]

I am sticking my trust to more reliable sources.

 

http://www.sgcarmart.com/articles/engine_o..._vs_mineral.php

 

I especially like the part whereby they commented that syn oil will clean up your engine. So I believe there is still advantages when using syn oil as compared to min oil.

[Genie47]

30wt oils abound in Malaysia. The Perodua engines are all spec'd to run 30wt oil. Shell has a 10W30 for Peroduas. Dunno if there are any in the stations just north of here.

[DarkLord]

I saw some 10W-30s going for RM13!

[Genie47]

Syn oil doesn't clean engines. Syn oil doesn't give much of that crud called sludge because the old process of making engine oil is dewaxing. What happened with the dino oil of the past is that they became sludge in high temperatures.

 

The good dino oil these days in particular from ChevronTexaco (Caltex) are Group II+ which they proudly name IsoSyn. As you know iso is Greek for "same". So it is very highly refined. Shell on the other hand has a process that is very closed to hydrocracking whch they call VHVI processing. Again very good stuff. Finally, Conoco which does hydrocracking on all levels making the oil Group III. Their best oil in the Asia is the Hydroclear 5W30. Stayed a solid SAE30 when I ran it. Additive package is robust but could do with some molybdenum.

 

The stuff they make these days are very close to syn oil. Very very close.

 

If you look at BITOG UOA folder, the best performing oils are usually the dino oil save for forced induction engines.

[Genie47]

Mai tu liao. Buy and change every 5k. In the end, the engine is like horse being fed with fresh water everyday.

 

Who knows, you spend a little more doing UOA and then finally find out can last 10k. More savings!

[Zrun]

Experimentally, synthetic oil is definitely better than mineral oil.

 

However, for low quality small engines, such as lawn mower, etc, their experiments found that synthetic oil has much more protection over regular 30wt oil. They warn that using 30w oil during cold weather can lead to piston wear.

 

Maybe automobile engines is built better such that there's not much difference between Syn and mineral, but I prefer to be on the safe side.

 

One bad thing about synthetic oil is that I try to use it for about 10-15k km, however, at about 10k km, I cannot stand looking at dirty dipstick oil, and I always change it early. With regular oil, the oil is hardly dirty every 5k km oil change.

Edited April 21, 2005 by Zrun

[Sky8807]

If the oil is not dirty after 5k, it can mean 2 things

the oil is not doing its job or

the engine is too clean

 

IMO, there are definately difference bet syn and min oil. just that most of us did not test it to its max, and we don't really need too. that's why its no difference to us.

 

I'm being using syn oil for many years and on many cars I had owned, no regrets. The price may be higher initially, but the chgd interval longer, so it actually is not really costly after all.

Edited April 23, 2005 by Sky8807