Short trips and long drain intervals?

[Patman]

If you're gonna do short trips, the synthetic will handle it better. This was proven in the SAE paper which described the Aunt Minnie test, where a car was driven for 5 years doing very short trips and all on the same batch of oil! In the beginning of the test it was 3 mile trips but then it was even less than this in the last half. I believe the oil went 7000 miles and they tore the engine down and found no significant wear.

[ November 10, 2002, 01:48 PM: Message edited by: Patman ]

 

[Patman]

Also, why not take a longer route to work? I know I would if it were me. Also, do you not take the car out on longer trips on the weekends? I often go far out of my way on the weekends to drive to further places just to drive aimlessly around.

 

[Drew99GT]

Your saying they went 5 years and never changed the oil? Or they changed it every 7,000 miles? I guess I'm going to go with Mobil 1 10w-30 next time and change it every 5,000 miles with the mobil 1 filter. Is the Mobil 1 5w-30 really that bad, or any 5w-30 for that matter, especially with long drain intervals? Would 0w-30 be even worse as far as shear stability over long intervals?

 

[SteveD2]

All the Mobil 1 xW-30 oils meet the extended drain and shear test in ACEA A5-02: "A5--Stable, stay-in-grade oil intended for use at extended drain intervals in high performance gasoline engines designed to be capable of using low friction, low viscosity oils with a HT/HS of 2.9 to 3.5 mPa.s. These oils may be unsuitable for use in some engines."
http://www.acea.be/ACEA/20020618PublicationsOilSequences.pdf
https://dallnd6.dal.mobil.com/GIS/M...61638dff7d0453b085256b8400618b40?OpenDocument

Mobil 1 0W-40 and 15W-50 meet a tougher shear spec, ACEA A3-02.

These are all excellent oils--it's hard to find better.

Ken

 

[Al]

quote:

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Originally posted by Drew99GT:
Your saying they went 5 years and never changed the oil? Or they changed it every 7,000 miles? I guess I'm going to go with Mobil 1 10w-30 next time and change it every 5,000 miles with the mobil 1 filter. Is the Mobil 1 5w-30 really that bad, or any 5w-30 for that matter, especially with long drain intervals? Would 0w-30 be even worse as far as shear stability over long intervals?

---

Actually, I believe it was 6 years and they accumulated about 7K miles in that time. Because of the amount of sample it almost came to a changeout, but because there were samples of old and new oil the effect was not nearly as good as a complete changeout. The engine was judged to be in excellent condition even though the irons were like(I believe) 400 ppm.

 

[pepper32]

I have the same problem. Four miles to the job site, arctic temps. in the winter. Vehicles sit and idle 15 minutes warming to and from work. I have been using Mobil1 since '92 changing every three months (less than 3,000 miles).

 

[Drew99GT]

Is this a recipe for disaster, especially in winter? I posted about 3 weeks ago and took some advice and switched to 5w-30 penzoil dino for winter. I plan on changing it in about 3,000 miles and want to switch back to Mobil 1 and try the supersyn out. I want to try out 4-5,000 mile drain intervals as well with their 10w-30 instead of 5w-30 dino (many people say 10w-30 mobil1 flows better than 5w-30 dino?). However, I work about 3 miles from my home, so Monday through Friday my car gets to temp for about 10 seconds! Any suggestions? I also indicated in an earlier post about the fact that I had a cooler temp thermostat. On many people's advice, I went back to the stock 195 degree stat vs. the 180, and my car runs a hell of a lot better! All this cooler temp thermostat hype is a load of crap IMO. Best thing is to rig a manual fan switch and get it to run about 200-205. Oh, this is in a 99 Grand Am GT 3.4L V-6. Any suggestions for the oil situation for winter time? Thanks

 

[Patman]

I've got that SAE paper right here and the test duration was 62 months, and a total of 7000 miles. They sampled 5.4L of oil and also added 4.4L of oil. So effectively they did do a couple of oil changes based on this additional oil, although there was no full oil drain.

The first 3800 mile phase they did two 3 mile trips per day, in the last 3200 miles they did two 1.5 mile trips per day.

The used oil iron content was 570ppm, however a visual inspection of the engine showed no abnormal wear or corrosion.