Mobil 1 5w20 - 7,127 mi - 2003 F150 5.4L

[jca]

I ran Mobil 1 5w20 for the first time in this after using GTX 5w20 since it was new. I can't say it did a bad job, but not any better than the Castrol. Also the 100 cSt of 7.37 seems pretty low. It has M1 5w20 EP in it this time and I was planning on 9k if this one looked good. That seems reasonable but it's not as good as I was hoping.

Comments: Copper was the only element reading out of line with universal averages in the first report from your F150, and that dropped slightly this time. Most other metals increased slightly, but that's normal on a longer oil run, and we don't see evidence of any sort of problem developing. Universal averages are based on ~5,300 miles of oil use, so your wear looks pretty good in this sample. You switched to Mobil 1 from Castrol GTX, so the additives are a bit different, but this new oil seems to be working well. The TBN was still good at 3.2, so try for 9K miles next oil. Nice!
Code:
Oil M1 5w20 GTX 5w20

MI/HR on Oil 7,127 5,383

MI/HR on Unit 69,581 62,454

Sample Date 4/3/12 10/7/11

Make Up Oil 1 1 AVERAGES



ALUMINUM 5 4 3

CHROMIUM 2 1 1

IRON 17 7 16

COPPER 8 9 4

LEAD 0 1 1

TIN 0 0 1

MOLYBDENUM 78 6 63

NICKEL 1 1 1

MANGANESE 0 0 2

SILVER 0 0 0

TITANIUM 0 0 1

POTASSIUM 0 0 2

BORON 38 6 56

SILICON 12 11 14

SODIUM 119 294 30

CALCIUM 1206 1808 2229

MAGNESIUM 720 7 115

PHOSPHORUS 679 709 719

ZINC 833 834 858

BARIUM 0 0 1





PROPERTIES

SUS Viscosity @ 210°F 50.3 56.0 48-57

cSt Viscosity @ 100°C 7.37 9.07 6.7-9.7

Flashpoint in °F 390 395 >355

Fuel %
Antifreeze % 0.0 0.0 0.0

Water % 0.0 0.0 0.0

Insolubles % 0.2 0.4
TBN 3.2 3.7

 

[buster]

Looks good. The GTX is a good oil and you may not see any improvement with the M1. There is still a lot of Na in this UOA from the GTX.

 

[Gene K]

I dont see any reason that EP shouldnt be run at least 10,000 miles. I suspect the standard M1 would have held on 10,000 miles as well.

 

[dnewton3]

In no way is that a bad UOA, but I really don't see anything to get excited about, performance wise.

First of all, I'd caution to say that after a switch of oil brand, you're going to not have a normalized sample, so some of this is not really science but conjecture. Just keep that in mind as you read on.

You ran 35% longer than univ avg in mileage, but really didn't get any stupendus reduction in wear using a syn (not that I'm suprised in any way about that).

Let's guess that the M1 cost at LEAST 2x more (perhaps 3x?). Did you get the value out of the syn? Not in my view. The wear from M1 was right around univ avg, which is heavily predominated by dinos.

This is yet another example of how syns are often a waste of money. Don't jump on me just yet; read on ...
To get the ROI from any lube (syn, semi, dino) you want to realize a maximized return on your investment. If you spend 3x more money on a product, you'd like to think you'll get one of two things:
1) 3x "better" performance
2) 3x "more" performance

In the case of lubes, you'd like to think the M1 would either reduce your wear by a 3x factor (or whatever your cost factor was), or you would want 3x longer OCI for the same amount of wear. You got neither. In short, you paid a lot of money to get the same wear protection, essentially the same TBN, vis, etc.

Now you're running M1EP; that costs even more. I suspect you'd easily want to get 3x or more of something from this next UOA.

To be clear, the M1 didn't hurt your engine at all. It hurt your wallet.

 

[Maxima97]

The F-150 is never see extreme cold start temp in Cal. Blackstone papers says the oil has little effect on metal wear as long as you use the car manual suggest weight and OCI. For extended OCI, use synthetic is recommended. For dino at 5K and synthetic at 7.5k, I would just save the UOA money and change the oil myself.

 

[jca]

Originally Posted By: dnewton3
In no way is that a bad UOA, but I really don't see anything to get excited about, performance wise.

I'm with you on that, it did perfectly fine but nothing to be really excited about. In all fairness it cost about 1.6 times what I paid before so it would have to go 8,700 to get the same $$/mi which I don't doubt would be fine. The EP cost an extra $6 beyond that so it would have to go 11,000 for the same value.

My main goal was to go to 1 year OCI on this since it normally gets less than 10,000 per year. The viscosity seems really low at 7.37 compared to the Castrol at 9.07, and since there's no OP gauge it's bothering me a lot. The Castrol starts out at 9.1, and for the M1 to go from 8.9 to 7.37 doesn't seem acceptable.

 

[addyguy]

GTX is a good oil, it did really well in the previous interval.