This is ANOTHER best oil thread. I liked the good old days!
Amsoil vs HPL; cost difference worth it?
- Thread starter ARB1977
- Start date
Never used boutique oils or expensive oil filters in all my years starting in the 70's. Do 5K oil and filter changes. If I owned a business, with a huge fleet of vehicles, then I would use Amsoil or HPL in drums for extended OCI's, paired with the best oil filter.
4wd
$50 site donor 2026
Didn’t say it did. My point was if you are good about reasonable OCIs, for most cars it’ll be a wash whatever oil you use.
Some car manufacturers recommend 15-20k oil change intervals. Do that on most off the shelf oils and, not so good.
I would not use ANY oil past 8-10k miles, personally.
Not really. We're seen oil consumption develop even on modest OCIs. Poor oil choice is as important as OCI length these days; which to your point the OCI should still be appropriate to which combination of oil/vehicle/usage context we're talking about.
However, change the oil selection alone and the context is different. So no, oil selection does, in fact, matter a lot and is hardly a wash.
To what degree is up for debate on the vehicle and usage in question. Sometimes, it may not matter much. Often times these days, there can be quite the massive gap between oils that may not actually do the job and which are sufficient. It’s always context dependent so we can’t say a generalized “oil is oil” sort of messaging with it doesn’t matter as long as the interval is reasonable. Deposits start occurring after oil changes. A deposit prone engine doesn’t get by on simply more frequent oil changes.
Edited for nuance and clarity
Last edited:
Again, for most cars, 5k OCIs and a solid oil with the right approvals for your vehicle will be fine for hundreds of thousands of miles.
If modern GDI cars have serious issues with carbon deposits, I’d say running Top Tier fuel and a good PEA treatment every oil change will be useful too.
Yeah if a car has a tendency to develop oil consumption issues due to buildup, that’s a special use case. Just like I feel like HPL/Amsoil is worth it for my sports cars that put oil through a lot more stress at high revs and power than an average passenger car would.
Its similar to what car brand is the best, or beer is the best. Who has the best pizza? Not enough time on this planet to try them all. Though I'm willing to try for the best pizza and beer.
I'm an Amsoil customer and dealer. Amsoil has some great products and a good range too. Better yet, I trust Amsoil products. And because BITOG is a group of folks like me, I would trust HPL. I'll probably try them someday, but we tend to go with what we know. Haven't gotten to them yet.
I'm an Amsoil customer and dealer. Amsoil has some great products and a good range too. Better yet, I trust Amsoil products. And because BITOG is a group of folks like me, I would trust HPL. I'll probably try them someday, but we tend to go with what we know. Haven't gotten to them yet.
Subjectively, how do we define this? I would say with the Valvoline tear downs the conventional oil was not fine at all. Compression ring was freed after swapping it to Valvoline Restore and Protect. How about an oil like Amsoil or HPL; which prevent the deposits in the first place?
While fuel additives can help some, this is mostly an oil related issue. Entry level OTS oils have, over the course of ownership, failed to prevent deposits and led to worse performing engines. How much this may or may not take off the life of the vehicle is an area we can't directly answer other than to say you run the risk of more fuel consumption, more oil consumption and potential oil starvation as a result. It's more of a question of getting by vs optimization; which is why this forum exists. Sure, throw any fuel or oil into a vehicle and might go hundreds of thousands, but we don't see the internals without testing. Oil costs over the life of a vehicle are a mere fraction of fuel costs; for example. So, why cheapen and possibly (likely) have your vehicle perform worse? Vehicle costs are sky high.
So, yeah, more of a modern issue with TGDI in terms of frequency.
Did something change at Royal Purple? I see a lot of people in this thread suggesting it. I distinctly remember multiple people doing oil shootouts/comparisons on YouTubers a few years ago, and every single person had the same result with Royal Purple having very bland test results despite being marketed and priced as a boutique-ish oil.
- Joined
- Oct 25, 2021
- Messages
- 2,696
I have selected to use both since they are both site sponsor’s. For me the price difference between AMSOIL Signature Series and No HPL no VII was $1.78/quart. <<<<—- this includes shipping and tax (as applicable) but excludes the amortized cost of prefer pricing at Amsoil factored in.
Is one better than the other? Don’t care.
Does one cost slightly more than the other? Don’t care - it is a rounding error over vehicle life. FYI, if I had purchased the HPL Premium PECO instead of the No VII, that knocks off $0.54/quart.
Am I going to run one for less miles than the other? No and I intend to run both oils to their usable limits.
Are the applications per vehicle any different? Not really, all are GDI Ford’s built between 2023 and 2025 ( 1 V8 and 3 Ecoboosts).
Am I worried that my GDIs are going to die an early death due to the evil fuel dilution? No, it is one of the reason for using these products in case that condition negatively presents itself.
Be glad you have the flexibility to use whatever oil you want for the oil change interval length you want, in the automobiles you own. I think you will be well served by either.
JMO and YMMV
Both seem to be some of the best products out there. The chances are, both are overkill for vast majority of the people, consideeing Pennzoil/Valvoline/Mobil1 already have very good performing oil for less. I guess for the price difference to worth it, we should say "By using HPL rather than Pennzoil Ultra Platinum, you are decreasing the likelihood of needing a $5K repair in the next 5 years from 40% to 10%. Meaning expected repair codt decreases 2K -0.5K = $1500, which is more than your cost of switching from Pennzoil Ultra Platinum to HPL"
I don't think for most people that worths it. Unless extended OCI is needed, i guess
I don't think for most people that worths it. Unless extended OCI is needed, i guess
Have you priced out AMSOIL Signature Series with a gallon case of 4? It's much cheaper than that. Around $10/quart and a little change or so from what I can remember.
Frankly I'd stick with AMSOIL. I think their history and testing is unmatched. If you don't think so, watch the Banks Power video series from his visit to the AMSOIL headquarters. (If you want to stay boutique. Good argument for all the high quality oils OTS at Walmart.) Rudnick isn't at HPL any more. I don't know if they'll lose touch with time without him as the formulas drift and change, but I trust AMSOIL to make a quality product forever.
Last edited:
This is one of the best arguments I think. Even as I typed out my above post on the cost, I'm wondering why I'm not just running AMSOIL? An oil change for basically $55-60 and an OEM Denso filter for like $2-3... That's a tank of gas now, or it was, thanks to this absolute nonsense in Iran. (I suppose $20-30 is still $20-30 saved, on the other hand, you could argue.)
Truth
I have quite a stock of Amsoil motor oils as you might imagine many years worth. I don’t pay or charge retail for locals but if I total it all retail still tiny compared to 12 months of fuel
BrendanC
$100 site donor 2024
pablo i need to talk to you about some amsoil coolant sometime in the next few months.
Similar threads
