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Originally Posted By: ottotheclown
RE.Gary Allen: does that fact that there is no real gain in syn vs dino, make Consumer Report back in the late 90 seem right???From what I can remember that is what they found to be the case in the NY taxi test. Thank you Gary for that thread..
That's only in regard to wear/engine "lifespan". The taxi test really wasn't going to get any other results. It's like Doug's experience with his heavy duty fleets. The only distinction you could most likely see is the same results over a longer service interval.
Taxi service isn't hard on an engine as much as we're led to believe. The biggest wear curve is during the first 20 minutes of operation. That's a high percentage of the time for the majority of the typical driver's daily commute. So, most of us are in about the highest wear producing time ..MOST of the time. Taxis have one warm up event per day. What's to wear? Now the transmissions could sure take a beating. Even assuming no component defect, every shift is one less shift out of the trans.
The main reason taxi service is considered severe is that it typically has a whacked mismatch between miles and fuel consumed. The 6000 miles of the CU study would (probably - could be) 7500-10000 miles in total fuel used by ..let's say a 50 mile per day commuter.
The only distinction that could be had with using synthetic oils in that study would have been to double it to 12k and see what wear it produced. I don't think that they explored that aspect thoroughly enough to show that.
The test was there to prove that synthetics didn't produce less wear than conventional ..and, in that commercial/fleet type testing, it's true. The test didn't NOT try and prove that you could get just as long a life out of an engine with fewer oil changes using a synthetic.
RE.Gary Allen: does that fact that there is no real gain in syn vs dino, make Consumer Report back in the late 90 seem right???From what I can remember that is what they found to be the case in the NY taxi test. Thank you Gary for that thread..
That's only in regard to wear/engine "lifespan". The taxi test really wasn't going to get any other results. It's like Doug's experience with his heavy duty fleets. The only distinction you could most likely see is the same results over a longer service interval.
Taxi service isn't hard on an engine as much as we're led to believe. The biggest wear curve is during the first 20 minutes of operation. That's a high percentage of the time for the majority of the typical driver's daily commute. So, most of us are in about the highest wear producing time ..MOST of the time. Taxis have one warm up event per day. What's to wear? Now the transmissions could sure take a beating. Even assuming no component defect, every shift is one less shift out of the trans.
The main reason taxi service is considered severe is that it typically has a whacked mismatch between miles and fuel consumed. The 6000 miles of the CU study would (probably - could be) 7500-10000 miles in total fuel used by ..let's say a 50 mile per day commuter.
The only distinction that could be had with using synthetic oils in that study would have been to double it to 12k and see what wear it produced. I don't think that they explored that aspect thoroughly enough to show that.
The test was there to prove that synthetics didn't produce less wear than conventional ..and, in that commercial/fleet type testing, it's true. The test didn't NOT try and prove that you could get just as long a life out of an engine with fewer oil changes using a synthetic.
