Benefits not shown in a UOA?

[21Rouge]

I try to ignore the stellar UOAs for many dino oils thinking that spending the extra money on a GC or PP or M1 or XD will stand my car in good ie better stead down the road. I have the secret but definitely unsubstantiated hope (that's why I have kept it secret ...until now ) that using a superb quality syn has benefits not necessarily shown in a UOA. even if the oil is changed every 3 k miles. There I said it!

 

[Alcibiades]

I'm intrigued, but if a UOA doesn't show the benefit, how would one know? This presents something of an epistemological dilemma: one cannot prove a negative proposition (basic fact of predicate logic), so we can't say you're wrong, but still, as you yourself admit, your hope is unsubstantiated. This isn't a philosophy seminar; we need physical evidence.

 

[simple_gifts]

quote:

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I'm intrigued, but if a UOA doesn't show the benefit, how would one know?

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You can look @ the specs of the oil supplied by the manufacturer. Cold weather pumpability could be better for example.

 

[GROUCHO MARX]

As I said in another thread, for many, synthetic oil is overkill.

 

[carock]

The correct test would be engine wear of actual components. For instance, instead of looking for bearing wear particles in used oil, you look at the actual weight loss of the bearings. I just don't know about regular street engines, the results take too long. In racing engines, I can guarantee you synthetic oils work best.I can't see how the dino oils could be better than synthetics.Perhaps UOA's are just the wrong test.I don't fully understand UOA tests. A UOA counts the particles of wear components. Is it possible that the wear particles in synthetics are smaller? I just don't know.

 

[OriginHacker21]

My parent's car at 40,000 miles with 3k dino looks (through the oil cap) very varnished. My 39,000 car with synthetic @ 3-5k looks as silver as new metal. The fact that when we drain my parent's car the oil is black as tar after 3k - and when I drain my oil the oil looks brand new with a TBN of 9.6... Although that isn't 100% scientific - I go from what I see and I choose Synthetic. Just starting to break myself from doing 3k synthetic runs

 

[GMorg]

carock, The current technology can count particles, but most of the UOA report is generated by stripping the elements to plasma and looking at them directly by their signature spectra. As such, the smaller the particle, more likely it is to be fully measured. In addition, the larger particle are often (hopefully) captured by the filter to never be seen in a UOA. My largest issue with UOA to asses an oil is that I really think that a UOA (in the absense of mechanical failure) is really measuring the efficiency of the airfilter/breather system. Within the normal range of elemental analysis, wear seems to more correlated with Si and/or engine type than it is related to oil...by far. So, I think that if oils are little different, you will never know. If they are very different, then large data sets should show the differences.