Costco's Kirlkland 15w40 @ 16k mi / Volvo VNL780 with D13 engine @ 611k mi

[DieselSauce]

Actually looks pretty good. Delo 400LE is probably a decent choice if you're looking for boron.

I thought it's a good oil too, WD makes good blends, and you can't beat the price, but Delo gets the extra points for Boron.

 

[oggb]

I thought it's a good oil too, WD makes good blends, and you can't beat the price, but Delo gets the extra points for Boron.

I wondered who made the Kirkland. Like with most things sold at Costco you can't really go too wrong. Just looked and it's $36 for 3 gallons at my local Costco. That's a good bit less than I've paid for bulk Rotella 15w-40 in the past and I don't think Rotella is anything special.

 

[blufeb95]

Another one to try might be Rural King's providence brand if there's a Rural King anywhere near, 8/gal in pails ain't a bad price, even 10/gal for individuals ain't something to complain about.
T

It says it's syn-blend, although really the "conventional" offerings from most manufacturers are probably practically syn blend anyways since they're using high VI group II base oils like Exxon's EHC. They claim all the following specs, I don't see the providence name on the MB 228.31 list, but I do see Lubrigold, which this very well may be the same oil as the Lubrigold since it's made by Warren Oil and some of these tests like the Volvo T13 oxidation test required for VDS-4.5 are super expensive to run because they run for 360 hours straight, so I would think Warren probably reuses the same formulations for the several private labels they supply.

 

[kschachn]

Another one to try might be Rural King's providence brand if there's a Rural King anywhere near, 8/gal in pails ain't a bad price, even 10/gal for individuals ain't something to complain about.
TView attachment 63596
It says it's syn-blend, although really the "conventional" offerings from most manufacturers are probably practically syn blend anyways since they're using high VI group II base oils like Exxon's EHC. They claim all the following specs, I don't see the providence name on the MB 228.31 list, but I do see Lubrigold, which this very well may be the same oil as the Lubrigold since it's made by Warren Oil and some of these tests like the Volvo T13 oxidation test required for VDS-4.5 are super expensive to run because they run for 360 hours straight, so I would think Warren probably reuses the same formulations for the several private labels they supply.
View attachment 63598

It’s not worded properly for a Mercedes-Benz approval either so I doubt it has it.

 

[blufeb95]

It’s not worded properly for a Mercedes-Benz approval either so I doubt it has it.

It's not worded like it's supposed to but that doesn't mean it's not, it took Chevron quite a while to get it right looking at the 5 year old bottles I have in my garage, some of the older ones from 2016-2017 say Daimler MB 228.31, then slightly newer said MB 228.31, only the newest bottles I bought earlier this year say MB-Approval, I'd assume Warren Oil is probably slower to update their packaging to have the correct semantics, because even Lubrigold seems to only reference Daimler MB 228.31 on the website and it is on the Bevo list.

 

[kschachn]

It's not worded like it's supposed to but that doesn't mean it's not, it took Chevron quite a while to get it right looking at the 5 year old bottles I have in my garage, some of the older ones from 2016-2017 say Daimler MB 228.31, then slightly newer said MB 228.31, only the newest bottles I bought earlier this year say MB-Approval, I'd assume Warren Oil is probably slower to update their packaging to have the correct semantics, because even Lubrigold seems to only reference Daimler MB 228.31 on the website and it is on the Bevo list.

Yeah I know some entities are sloppy with that. Makes you wonder what else they are sloppy with.

There's enough obfuscation going on with blenders that like to make you think an oil has an approval but does not, one does not need those who really have something to make it difficult to determine. Castrol comes to mind.

 

[DieselSauce]

I wondered who made the Kirkland. Like with most things sold at Costco you can't really go too wrong. Just looked and it's $36 for 3 gallons at my local Costco. That's a good bit less than I've paid for bulk Rotella 15w-40 in the past and I don't think Rotella is anything special.

Warren Distribution makes it, WD makes Walmart and Amazon oil too as as well many other store brands, 36$ is a steep hike from the 27$ I paid the last two times I bought it, a member posted a picture a while back while on sale for 22$, I went to my local Costco yesterday and was hoping it would be on sale but the opposite happened, 30$/case now.

 

[Artem]

Run it at least 20-25k. Anything shorter is wasting perfectly good oil, in my opinion based on my own data from two semi’s (a Volvo and Kenworth) where 15k samples showed plenty of life left.

 

[bbslider001]

Yeah I know some entities are sloppy with that. Makes you wonder what else they are sloppy with.

There's enough obfuscation going on with blenders that like to make you think an oil has an approval but does not, one does not need those who really have something to make it difficult to determine. Castrol comes to mind.

LOL....there is that word again. Love it.

 

[Dogman]

Additive package was a bit disappointing, it completely lacks Boron and Barium, and low on Moly, this would most likely make me look at other oils.

Speaking about Boron, I have about two pounds of this slippery white powder in the Hexagonal form HbN, I had it left over from some projects in the past and thought of adding it to this Costco oil, so I mixed about 1200 ppm with this oil and did an oil change on a Yanmar air cooled diesel running a military generator, I will do an oil sample at about 100 hours, I hope the boron will boost the performance.

Boron Nitride is not cheap at all and I believe it's reason why oil manufacturers are cheaping out on it, and instead go for the less expensive Phosphorus.

Ballsy

 

[DieselSauce]

Costco Jacked up the price of this oil, it now costs 33$ plus 1.99 oil fee in NJ stores, so I bought 2 pails of Sinopec Tulux T700 15w40 for 54.63$ each, 18L 4.75 gallons, came out with tax to 106$, about the same price per gallon compared to Costco's now, but the Tulux is apparently synthetic or semi-synthetic, I hope I'm not making a mistake by running this stuff, I'll do a sample at the 15k miles, fingers crossed.

 

[tnt_motorsports]

All oil prices are headed up. I don’t think it will get better any time soon. I’d suggest you find an oil you like and buy a bunch. I bought 12 gallons of Mystik JT8 15w40 in September. That will do 4 oil changes in my Cummins Ram.

Also most conventional oils are now listed as synthetic blends.

Just my $0.02