I tend to discount these sorts of results for several reasons. Not that I don't believe that they're true and accurate, mind you - I just discount their importance somewhat. Here's why:
- Most manufacturers seem to come up with tests in which their oil performs the best. They might all be picking different tests, and it stands to reason that any oil is a compromise, in terms of chemistry, not only between different desirable base oil properties and different desirable additive properties but also in terms of cost and in terms of what manufacturer and industry standards will need to be met. It stands to reason that different oils would have different performance characteristics and therefore not only different strengths but also different weaknesses. Surely the manufacturers are not showing you the tests in which their weaknesses are apparent!
- An oil can have legitimately extraordinary properties, but if those properties exceed what is required in a given application then they may not be important. In fact a given oil might wind up with a bunch of extraordinary unimportant properties while having mediocre important properties and therefore fail to be an excellent all-around oil. I think sometimes we see that to a degree in UOAs where some boutique and high-end oils are frequently outperformed in service by very ordinary oils. My tendency is to think that often the best performing oils might not have the most extreme laboratory test results but instead find a superb overall balance mainly by getting the basics absolutely right. Oils like Delo, Havoline, Maxlife, PP and some others seem to consistently perform in a superior way even compared to some of the most intensively engineered (and intensively hyped) "high-performance" oils, and personally I would include many Mobil oils in the latter category.
- We have the best bottom-line "test" of oil right here at BITOG, by which I'm referring to the vast UOA database. To whatever degree a particular test might tell you something about the oil being tested, it all eventually feeds into the oil's actual performance in use, and that in-use performance trumps the importance of any one specific test or even all specific tests put together. I know some will say that UOAs (especially cheap UOAs) only give you an INDICATION of wear and not the whole story, but to me that is an apologist's argument and I don't really buy it. If an oil gives consistently excellent results, across a wide range of operating conditions, winter and summer, short trips and long, in a variety of engines, that is the most important piece of data pro or con for the oil's effectiveness, and laboratory-tested properties shrink towards irrelevance by comparison.
I suppose that if you have a truly unusual or extreme set of operating conditions, then you could have a thread by which to argue for particular qualities in an oil - extreme HTHS capabilities, or high-temperature stability, or whatnot - and yet it seems to me that even in those extreme (for street, at least) cases the same oils tend to consistently come out on top.
Take this for what it's worth - I'm not trying to put down the many excellent high end oils. I'm only providing what seems to me a relevant counter-argument to the proposition that spending more money (usually) for an oil because of its presumably superior laboratory qualities (or often its superior marketing qualities) is the best way to ensure protection and performance.
