Originally Posted By: dnewton3
Aha! found the post and the link ....
http://www.eneos.us/images/SUSTINAtemp.jpg
Look at the pictures of the valve cover.
Compare the dino at 3k miles to syn at 6k miles; the level of "clean" is very similar.
Now look at the 6k mile dino and 12k mile syn shots; again, very similar results.
Now, again - this is about ROI. Did the syn "clean" anything "better"? It depends upon your point of view ...
If you pick an arbitrary OCI duration, then the syn might be able to sustain a level of clean you desire. But you could ALSO get that SAME level of clean with a dino, but you'd simply have to shorten the OCI! This is what I mean by a "game" of OCI duration. For ANY result you want to see, one can manipulate the OCI of ANY product, to get a specific result. Your synthetic cannot "clean" better than my dino oil, because all I have to do is shorten an OCI to get the same result.
And so, this is about ROI. HOW LONG can you sustain a level of clean, relative to the costs incurred.
I prefer to manage my maintenance plan in a more pragmatic manner. I set levels of condemnation for the lube and wear rates and totals. Until those are breached, then any fluid is acceptable. The "best" fluid is the one that sustains safe operational conditions for the least cost.
If you go back to those pictures, and think of the "clean" ratio, the syn keeps that exmaple clean for about a 2:1 ratio. As long as the syn does not cost 2x as much, it would be a good investment. But if the Sustina is more than 2x in cost, it would simply be "cheaper" to OCI more often with dino, and get the same result.
This is why I get so frustrated with folks that don't take ROI into account. They often have this mentality of "
cost is no issue; I want the best for my truck/car/motorcycle/boat/sewing machine/etc." But they don't define what "best" means, and they have no ability to judge a level of performance that they don't measure to some practical manner. It's a "game" to see who can get the most clean, or lowest wear totals, etc.
Clean is a relative state of mind, not any different than wear rates and wear totals. You either pick fair minded condemnation points, and manage your program to those criteria, or you play a mind-game with the results and seek ever lower numbers in a futile effort to outdo the other guy, with no regard for your wallet.
Read my signature line.
Thanks for the explanation. You're absolutely right. There is performance and there is performance over time in the same fill. Synthetic may be better for the latter but not the former.
Having said that, your number crunching suggest that longer oci's result in less wear, so if syn performs the same as dino but just for longer, isn't total wear going down as you're not putting in fresh syn as often as fresh dino?
I understand though that through monitoring, the dino may be within your wear limits regardless but all things being equal (excluding longevity), if time on oil helps to reduce wear, then syn has an advantage, no?