Discussion: Do We WAY Overthink Oil Choice?

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Yes, this forum WAY overthinks things. I was really into it for a little while. Now I'm running dealer bulk Mobil Special and ya know what, things are fine. It really doesn't matter. Oil is slippery and prevent contact between moving parts. They all have adequate additive packs per API spec. As long as you use your car's spec'd weight then it's thin enough for cold starts, whether it's conventional or syn. Seriously we look way too into here and cause a lot of unnecessary stress.
 
I've been the differences in actual engine wear, not concerning engine cleanliness. I know that synthetic oils will slow internal engine wear, therefore, I use synthetic oil in anything I can.

I'll use one example in particular. I have a customer that owns an 8th Gen Corolla, well known for their oil burning at a particular point. He changed the oil on that car religiously, every 5,000 miles or sooner (depending on time, not to exceed 6 months). At 160k miles, he had a severe oil consumption issue (1 qt/500 miles) and so we replaced the short block. What we found upon teardown was that the engine was one of the cleanest we'd possibly ever seen inside, just using regular dino oil and a Toyota filter, but at this point, you could wobble the top of this pistons in their respective cylinders, they were literally egg shaped!

Comparing that to one of our employees that has a 2AZ, another engine known to have oil consumption at higher mileage, he has used nothing but full synthetic oil in it since day one and has zero oil consumption issues to date (over 100k miles at this point IIRC).

There's a lot that goes into oil and I'm one that has a great amount of respect for those products of high quality, as are many here. Do we over think a simple purchase of oil? Sure! But isn't it satisfying to have that peace of mind knowing that you probably won't have an oil related engine failure or premature wear because you spent the extra time to learn the details on what goes in and how long to keep it going?
 
Well, it's quite interesting because I think this is one of the few forums where you can have hundreds of thousands of posts on a topic without any clarity emerging. However, I enjoy reading the posts here. I think it's less harmful than getting worked up over global plagues, terrorism, death, disease, pestilence, and whatnot.

Shucks, a 12 page discussion on the relative merits of 5-20 over 10-30 can be downright therapeutic.
 
The DSM-5 (that's the manual for psychiatric diagnosis) has a section called BITOG OCD.

That tells you there's a problem here, LOL.
 
Yes. But that doesnt mean that there can't be significant, yet beneficial differences in motor oils. For instance, my 2009 Town & Country consumes oil at the rate of 1qt/1k miles. Pennzoil Ultra has reduced the consumption (1qt/1800 miles). It is issues like this that attract new members to BITOG and keep the embers glowing. But generally speaking, yes! We over think it. For most people in most circumstances, pick an oil and stick with it!
 
Then there are issues like extended drains. Can a synthetic blend do 10k OCIs? Maybe. But for $1 more per month, why not go with a quality full synthetic and have peace of mind? Perhaps we overthink because we've got lots to think about!
 
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