Interesting long road trip observation

[tired]

If none stop days of driving, you could run 200 hours without an oil change. Say 50 MPH average for 200 hours would let you run 10,000 miles. 40 mph x 200 would easy be 8000 miles before changing, just saying the road trips are easiest on oils.

As an aside, another example of how strenuous the VW 507 certification is. It has a 650 hour engine wear test. (The VW 505 cert has a 250 hour engine test.)

 

[Azimuth]

As an aside, another example of how strenuous the VW 507 certification is. It has a 650 hour engine wear test. (The VW 505 cert has a 250 hour engine test.)

Isn't 505 full SAPS? If so, why does it have a test with a lower number of hours? Unless of course, the 250 hr and 650 hr test are different.

 

[Jeep J]

Here is a pic of the battle wagon at least. Brutally terrible mpgs but good at all the other things it needed to do.

2 door trucks are real trucks

 

[tired]

Isn't 505 full SAPS? If so, why does it have a test with a lower number of hours? Unless of course, the 250 hr and 650 hr test are different.

I'm not sure. I just remember looking up the differences in the certifications and the test length.

 

[Carlostrece]

Agree. I don't think there's much of a difference in price between PUP and PP either. Not sure why people stick with older products when there better ones at the same or cheaper prices.

PUP is a lot better than PP. Partly because PUP is excellent. Partly because PP is not so good, IMO. I think there are many lower cost oils that give better wear protection than PP.

So yes PUP is a good recommendation. It's GTL with good additives. However, it runs a bit thin per grade, which I don't like for high mileage engines.

Quaker State Ultimate Protection Full Syn (QSUPFS) is another oil in the Shell family. QSUPFS is 80-90% GTL and has good additives just like PUP, but QSUPFS runs thick per grade, which I think makes it better (especially for high mileage engines).

Also, QSUPFS costs much less than PUP.

 

[Carlostrece]

2 door trucks are real trucks

Agreed, but how many doors does that truck have? I'm not familiar with that model. Does it have 2 doors, or 2 full size doors plus 2 little suicide doors?

 

[Jeep J]

Agreed, but how many doors does that truck have? I'm not familiar with that model. Does it have 2 doors, or 2 full size doors plus 2 little suicide doors?

I see only 2 doors there, no suicide doors.
By the way, this is my dream truck. Tradesman, 8 feet bed, 6.7L Cummins, Aisin transmission.

 

[4WD]

I see only 2 doors there, no suicide doors.
By the way, this is my dream truck. Tradesman, 8 feet bed, 6.7L Cummins, Aisin transmission.
View attachment 293594

Grew up with regular cab LT’s - decided to try another in 2018 - lack of inside space was so impractical that I traded on something more practical

 

[Zee09]

Just returned from a cross country road trip with my oldest son from my home here in NJ out to Yosemite and back, hitting many national parks. Fun times!

My truck is an 18 Colorado with the V6. It normally gets 5k OCI's with Penzoil Plat 5w-30.

As a prep for this trip, I knew I would not be home in under 5k, so (probably unnecessarily, but made me feel better) I chose to go with Castrol's Extended Performance oil which boats 25k OCI's possible.

I have a Gold Plug oil plug on the truck with the magnetic tip. Normal oil changes see a bit of metal wear material on the magnet, a bit of a grey paste look to it, very normal with every vehicle I have ever owned.

To my surprise, after almost 8k miles with the road trip, dang if that magnet was clean as a whistle. Zero sign of any wear material!

I know a lot of wear happens on start-up, and those were very minimal over this OCI. The truck went over many mountain passes, 11k+ feet, and spent between 6 and 12 hours a day running at 80mph, so working quite hard. I expected to see at least the normal wear material on the magnet, but did not. Oil was visibly quite clean/clear too.

I think I'm sticking with the Castrol product from here on.

Great trip
I did over 900 miles straight yesterday in my Honda Accord.
It had 1700 miles on it...a 2025 and I changed the oil early with Amsoil Euro 0w30 which was my VW leftover oil.

During the drive, oil didn’t cross my mind. The crazy and insane drivers of all ages did.... the interstate is a war zone.
My trip from Maryland to Florida is something I have done for decades but every year the people get crazier.. Also being a bit frugal I see people using their big trucks to travel without towing or many occupants. It could be their only vehicle but I have owned many myself and think of the gas bill...lol

I'll get beat up but I saw several new Tundras on the road... not liking the back end style at all.... not that they care what I think....

 

[tired]

I see only 2 doors there, no suicide doors.
By the way, this is my dream truck. Tradesman, 8 feet bed, 6.7L Cummins, Aisin transmission.
View attachment 293594

The truck will fall apart around the engine.

 

[Hohn]

Just returned from a cross country road trip with my oldest son from my home here in NJ out to Yosemite and back, hitting many national parks. Fun times!

My truck is an 18 Colorado with the V6. It normally gets 5k OCI's with Penzoil Plat 5w-30.

As a prep for this trip, I knew I would not be home in under 5k, so (probably unnecessarily, but made me feel better) I chose to go with Castrol's Extended Performance oil which boats 25k OCI's possible.

I have a Gold Plug oil plug on the truck with the magnetic tip. Normal oil changes see a bit of metal wear material on the magnet, a bit of a grey paste look to it, very normal with every vehicle I have ever owned.

To my surprise, after almost 8k miles with the road trip, dang if that magnet was clean as a whistle. Zero sign of any wear material!

I know a lot of wear happens on start-up, and those were very minimal over this OCI. The truck went over many mountain passes, 11k+ feet, and spent between 6 and 12 hours a day running at 80mph, so working quite hard. I expected to see at least the normal wear material on the magnet, but did not. Oil was visibly quite clean/clear too.

I think I'm sticking with the Castrol product from here on.

Don't confuse the easiest duty cycle on earth (steady highway cruising) with Castrol somehow being special oil.

On the contrary, spending 6-12 hours a day at 80mph is not "working quite hard" it's actually the easiest duty cycle you can have for an engine: steady state, low load, with an average load factor of under 30%. There's a guy who TWICE put a million miles on a Tundra (two different trucks) using just TGMO on 10k OCIs. Why? Not because TGMO is legendary or that 10k is a short OCI. It's because it was all highway all the time (light towing in his case).

Truly, any EP synthetic oil you can buy at Walmart would do the same thing in that particular case of spending the entire 8k OCI on highway miles with the cruise set. Towing, climbing altitude etc are nothing when the engine is already warmed up.

Duty cycle matters hugely. As an example, a customer I visited once had a Cummins-powered generator on their ship with 57k hours on it, and it had never been rebuilt or even opened up. This is a B series Cummins, the same engine in the Ram trucks. At an average highway speed of 50mph, that amount of hours would equate to over 2.5 million miles. The engine used very little oil and ran perfectly fine. What was the secret? Duty cycle. The generator was used for shore power, so it would be powered up when the ship came into harbor, run at an average of 35% load (at a constant speed of 1500rpm) for days to weeks at a time, then shut down.

In a world where many engine get minutes to hours per start, this engine had days to weeks per start and ran at constant speed and nearly constant load, where it was always warm and never overloaded or abused. Thus, the wear rate was so low it almost ceased wearing.

This is exactly the kind of usage your Colorado experienced on this road trip.

This is not a criticism of Castrol. I'm just indicating that all the EP oils on the market would have easily duplicated such a feat; there's nothing particularly special about the Castrol.

 

[tired]

Don't confuse the easiest duty cycle on earth (steady highway cruising) with Castrol somehow being special oil.

On the contrary, spending 6-12 hours a day at 80mph is not "working quite hard" it's actually the easiest duty cycle you can have for an engine: steady state, low load, with an average load factor of under 30%. There's a guy who TWICE put a million miles on a Tundra (two different trucks) using just TGMO on 10k OCIs. Why? Not because TGMO is legendary or that 10k is a short OCI. It's because it was all highway all the time (light towing in his case).

Truly, any EP synthetic oil you can buy at Walmart would do the same thing in that particular case of spending the entire 8k OCI on highway miles with the cruise set. Towing, climbing altitude etc are nothing when the engine is already warmed up.

Duty cycle matters hugely. As an example, a customer I visited once had a Cummins-powered generator on their ship with 57k hours on it, and it had never been rebuilt or even opened up. This is a B series Cummins, the same engine in the Ram trucks. At an average highway speed of 50mph, that amount of hours would equate to over 2.5 million miles. The engine used very little oil and ran perfectly fine. What was the secret? Duty cycle. The generator was used for shore power, so it would be powered up when the ship came into harbor, run at an average of 35% load (at a constant speed of 1500rpm) for days to weeks at a time, then shut down.

In a world where many engine get minutes to hours per start, this engine had days to weeks per start and ran at constant speed and nearly constant load, where it was always warm and never overloaded or abused. Thus, the wear rate was so low it almost ceased wearing.

This is exactly the kind of usage your Colorado experienced on this road trip.

This is not a criticism of Castrol. I'm just indicating that all the EP oils on the market would have easily duplicated such a feat; there's nothing particularly special about the Castrol.

All great points. Just a few small updates. He actually did it on 10,000 mile OCIs with 0W-20 bulk oil at the dealer. He is a Hotshot driver, so it was hauling oil field equipment around in the bed of his truck. I don't think he towed anything.



Interesting watch. He says he got lazy and didn't do transmission fluid flushes this time!

 

[Dave P.]

You'd have to repeat the same roadtrip at same time of year with your usual oil to make a completely valid comparison between oils. Highway miles are much easier on engines. However, I do agree that Castrol Edge Extended Protection (EP) is superior to Pennzoil Platinum (PP).

Pennzoil Ultra Platinum (PUP) has a great reputation and lubricates well (in spite of being thin per grade). Pennzoil Platinum (PP) is bad in wear tests I've seen. Castrol Edge Extended Performance (EP) is a much better oil than PP. There are also a few other brands of excellent EP oils you should consider (which others will recommend). I recommend Quaker State Ultimate Protection Full Syn (QSUPFS), which is an EP type oil.

QSUPFS has several advantages (IMO) including: It's a mostly GTL Shell oil, which makes it similar to PUP, except that QSUPFS is thicker viscosity per grade (than PUP or Castrol Edge EP), QSUPFS is a 20K oil a good price at Walmart. I think (IMO) that QSUPFS is superior to PUP & Edge EP, and QSUPFS costs less.

Though to be fair, Castrol Edge EP and Castrol Edge HM EP are also good prices at Walmart.

The main thing is to stop using PP. It's not a good oil, IMO. Certainly not good for the price. There are many good oils that are better than PP, including ones that cost less.

If you want to catch fine metal wear particles that your oil filter can't, buy a pair/set of filter magnets and put then on your oil filter. https://www.shopfiltermag.com sells them in pairs/sets.

I also suggest upgrading your filter to a NAPA Gold, Oreilly Microgard Select, or any other autostore housebrand premium line of filter made by Premium Guard, or get Premium Guard EX, or Pentius filter. They filter finer particles, have thicker cans (especially NAPA Gold), and have pink silicon valve seal and gasket for extended OCI.

As someone who generally uses Pennzoil, can you share some of the wear tests that you have seen that shows Pennzoil Platinum to be a poor performer? You are obviously not a fan, so I am curious as to what you brought you to form this conclusion. Thanks!

 

[Hohn]

I'm not aware of any valid wear testing showing PP to be a "poor performer." But as someone who ran PP for a decade in my van and ended up with a lot of varnish, I will suggest that it is a short OCI oil. I thought I was being conservative using PP on the OLM recommendation in my Honda. Turns out that the OLM was way too aggressive for the PP's oxidation and volatility.

PP on OCIs of 5k or less is probably just fine. PUP would be better though.