At the risk of sounding like I'm making excuses for this oil, I think I have another idea of why my lead numbers weren't as good this interval.
A lot of times in the past few months I've gotten in a lot of heavy traffic, and when that happens, my oil temperature gets to at least 230F for sure (I know my coolant gets that hot, so my oil must be even hotter). But then what happens is that the traffic clears, I'll often immediately start driving the car hard, going full throttle all the way from a dead stop to beyond 70mph a few times.
During this time, with the oil temps so high, I'm sure my oil is very thin. This is a case where I wish my oil was a bit thicker. Schaeffer Oil advertises this oil as being between 10-12cst, but so far all the batches I have gotten have been in the 10 to 10.3 cst range. No disrespect to Schaeffer Oil, but I seriously doubt that their oil can have an HTHS of 3.5 if the viscosity is at 10cst. So when they list the spec of a 3.5 HTHS, but also list the range of viscosity at 10-12, I'm sure the batches which come out at 12cst at 100c are the ones which pull the 3.5 HTHS number. I just wish I could get the batches which come out at 12cst!
(who knows, maybe the two cases of 5w30 I just bought are now like this, since I have yet to do a used oil analysis on this batch yet, so I'm crossing my fingers!)
So as a result, I am now paying much more attention to details like that. I still love going full throttle in my car as often as I can, but I will no longer do it when the oil is super hot.
[ July 11, 2003, 08:53 AM: Message edited by: Patman ]