Oil is Oil

[wpod]

As many have pointed out, while oil is oil, add packs can and will vary. I do 5K OCIs on my cars (and others) that I service. I use name brand, M1, QS, Valvoline and some Kirkland.

If you pulled the valve cover off our 220K TSX, it would be surgical clean. Now I understand I live in a mild climate and my cars are mostly garaged... The TSX has had mostly M1 5w30, Honda/XG7317/M1 110a filters. If I had run, say the orange can/st or whatever filter and Kirkland/Super tech or whatever oil, would this engine be in this condition?

FYI, I would drive our beloved TSX to NY right now and not even check the oil.
Regardless, I love this car and believe regular services are cheap insurance.

I will say that you maintain your equipment?

 

[wpod]

What evidence is that?

The guy from HPL lubricants! Besides Mobil 1 oil is the official oil of NASCAR.

 

[OVERKILL]

Foxtrot mentioned how it is unlikely you'll see a deviation in your engine's B10 rating regardless of oil.

So what are the differences then?

Oils like HPL, Amsoil, Mobil 1 EP are heavily fortified with more anti oxidations, better viscosity modifiers and base oils that can extend drain intervals while keeping your engine cleaner.

I think you would absolutely see a difference between Kirkland 5w30 and HPL 5w30 over 20k mile drain intervals.

Hark back to @Trav's Honda 3.5 VCM pictures of these engines run on generics. The stuck rings, heavy varnish...etc. Does any of that show up in UOA's? Of course not, nor does the M1 0W-40 that he pivoted to in keeping them clean.

Using UOA's in this context is like taking an ice pick to your eyes and then trying to judge a bikini contest.

 

[buster]

^exactly.

That's why I don't mind paying more for overbuilt oil. Gives me peace of mind, and if I can't get to an oil change I feel better about having something that can handle it. You often see some cars develop oil consumption later in life due to ring sticking. You can avoid that buy paying for a better oil.

 

[steve40th]

Clean oil is better than dirty oil. Thats all their is to it.

 

[OVERKILL]

Clean oil is better than dirty oil. Thats all their is to it.

Unless the oil is clean because it's not keeping things in suspension, lol.

 

[wpod]

Still I will go with oil is oil at any given price point or marketing group. conventional , cheap syns, higher end syns then the upper end lets call them botique oil . If it keeps the parts seperated and the engine clean what else is needed will we see a difference in the oils? depends on how we use them and what engine they are run in. Conventional at 3,000 mile oil change intervals vs Amsoil SS at 3,000 mile oil change intervals, what would be the difference? Conventional oil at 15,000 oil change intervals vs Amsoil SS oils what would be the differences? The answer is simple yet complicated if we just think about it.

 

[kschachn]

I wonder how statistically deep they went. I bet the dataset is very messy and lacks the normalization required to really dig in. It’s likely very hard to accurately slice by the necessary variables to truly answer this question like car mileage, interval, age, make, model, date of test, oil brand, oil model, other metadata, etc. if the dataset is unclean.

Oh to have this dataset in Spotfire…

But you’re okay with the YouTube doods?

 

[buster]

Still I will go with oil is oil at any given price point or marketing group. conventional , cheap syns, higher end syns then the upper end lets call them botique oil . If it keeps the parts seperated and the engine clean what else is needed will we see a difference in the oils? depends on how we use them and what engine they are run in. Conventional at 3,000 mile oil change intervals vs Amsoil SS at 3,000 mile oil change intervals, what would be the difference? Conventional oil at 15,000 oil change intervals vs Amsoil SS oils what would be the differences? The answer is simple yet complicated if we just think about it.

Amsoil at 3k wouldn't make sense unless it's some engine that is extremely demanding on oil where Amsoil could prevent deposits (turbo/rings). Otherwise in most cars that interval just use whatever brand that meets the spec. At 15k mile drains you're going to see difference.

https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/threads/amsoil-engine-tear-down-pics.367209/

 

[tvaughn]

To me, it's about finding the best-priced oil that meets the manufacturer's specifications (under normal operating conditions).

 

[Foxtrot08]

A good analogy for this thread.

Do you call Oreos Oreos?

Or do you call them cream biscuits? Or cookie sandwiches?


Do you prefer the original Oreo? Maybe the double stuffed Oreo? Or the vanilla Oreo? Or maybe the store brand “cookie sandwich”? Or maybe you like to have artisan made, small batch cookie sandwiches made for you?


The store brand cookie sandwich might not taste like an original Oreo. The small batch, artisan made ones might taste better, but cost 5x more than an Oreo. They do the same thing, no? Delivers calories into your stomach, and sugar into your blood stream, eventually generating poop. Right?


People buy Oreos because the marketing, branding and taste is known. Not because it doesn’t turn to poop at the end of the life cycle.

 

[Al]

I assume, you meant SP/SN.

What OCI?


Assuming not going for extended drain intervals, no. It won’t make a B10 difference in that series of engines.

But a 1 of 1 example is a bad case.

ILSAC-SM

 

[Al]

Member Al has been here forever. He reserves his right to run his 10k oils for the entire 10k.
Besides, the little birdie in my head says Al has enough money to fix any oil-related problems - regarding his decision to abuse his engine 10-fold.

We BITOGERs of long standings love you AL. Have enjoyed a large majority of your posts over the years. But please live your remaining retirement years changing your darn oil a little sooner than 10k. Reward yourself with a Costco Card and get two-packs of adequate Kirkland Syn at inexpensive cost. Great for your vehicle doing 5k OCIs and you can still leve your oil filter on for the entire 10k.

Thanks Bro'

 

[Cujet]

Proper oil used, changed on time:

Mobil 1

The above mirrors my 40 years of performance and racing results. M1 will keep your engine clean, rings free, turbochargers coke-free and so on. Other oils may not.

 

[burbguy82]

What evidence is that?

Meant as a joke, kind of, with the meme that I was quoting. But, there are many who have and are using it in some high performance cars, for extended drains, and have had great success, on this forum and others. I have seen someone here ( who will remain nameless, with an high performance factory car, with the oil pan off, and it was spotless, and a near 20 year old car. As for bang for the buck, I think that last time I was in WalMart, it was $27.99 for 5 quarts, and Valvoline conventional was $22.99. For the price, M1 is hard to beat.

Really, I do not think there is a "best" oil. I think it all has to do with usage and OCI, than oil brand.

 

[burbguy82]

What evidence is that?

Also, there are boutique oils out there that are twice as expensive, like HPL and Amsoil, which may on paper be superior in several ways, but are they twice as good? Will it make an engine last twice as long? I think not.

I am interested in your opinion on this.

 

[userfriendly]

Are engine oils blended to meet a price point or performance level?

 

[kschachn]

Are engine oils blended to meet a price point or performance level?

Yes.

 

[Brian123]

Yes.

If you had said No, who knows how many pages this Thread would have gone between Yes and No!

 

[ZeeOSix]

right, but not a standard UOA, and that test would give wear rates, but could it distinguish why?

Yeah, normal UOAs like what Blackstone uses (the Inductive Coupled Plasma (ICP) spectrometer technique) isn't the best way to measure overall wear rates - maybe a little bit if you did a UOA on every OCI and kept detailed historical records over the life of the engine to look for trends based on different oils used and/or engine use conditions. Long term UOA trends might show an obvious "blip" in the data when something really starts going wrong inside the engine, but a slight change in wear rates due to different oil use (unless you went from a xW-40 to a 0W-16 or 0W-8 perhaps) would probably be nearly invisible to distinguish in the noise of the data. The wear metals in a Blackstone type UOA are only looking at particles that are around 5u and smaller. There are other test methods to measure wear metals in UOAs besides the method Blackstone uses. There have been many threads about that over the years.

I drew the red and blue lines where the 5u particle size would be. So a Blackstone ICP type UOA is only seeing the wear particles from the 0.1 to 5u range in the graph below. Any paritlces above 5u is blind to that type of UOA.