Synthetic oil bad in a lawnmower? Any truth in this self proclaimed experts statements?

If it is on the internet it must be true. No oil is too thin on startup ,,no?
 
Honda engines are developed, tested and certified with petroleum based motor oils as a lubricant. Synthetic oils may be used; however, any motor oil used in our engines must meet all oil requirements as stated in the owner’s manual. In addition, recommended oil change intervals must be followed.

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Briggs & Stratton 100074 5W30 Synthetic Engine Oil - 32oz Bottle

100% Synthetic SAE 5W-30 for use In all air cooled 4-cycle engines. 32 Oz. bottle. SAE 5W-30 Synthetic Engine Oil 32 oz. bottle Formulated for air cooled, 4 cycle engines in outdoor power equipment For use in all air-cooled 4-cycle engines Warranty approved for Briggs & Stratton® engines...
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350Rocket said:
I had a disagreement with someone on another forum that specializes in lawn equipment/small engines about whether or not full synthetic oil is dangerous to use in a lawnmower engine. They made all kinds of statements that didn't seem right to me. I'm wondering if some of the actual professional lubrication experts on this board like Molakule or others could read some of what he's said and tell me if there is any truth in it. The only source he could give me had nothing to do with synthetic vs conventional and was the basics of fluid dynamics, which obviously I don't have experience with or time to learn at this point. All of what I learned about oil has come from this forum over the past 15-20 years of casual reading. Here are 2 posts from this guy on the thread discussing use of synthetic in a lawnmower engine:

"What people fail to appreciate is engines are designed for a specific type of oil .
That includes the size of oil holes so that the right amount of oil will flow through them to do the job required and there will be sufficinet oil pressure left in the system to lubricate parts further down stream of the oil pump.
They also fail to understand that the flow charasterisc of oil under pressure is totally different to oil flow under gravity which is how the numbers on the front of the bottle are measured.
So all that the numbers on the bottle actually tell you is how the oil will drain back down the drain holes to the sump .
So for instance a synthetic oil that flows faster & easier will not provide enough oil to the last 2 journals on a strait 8 engine because all of the pressure will bleed off lubricating the first 6 cylinders .
Assuming cylinder 1 is closest to the oil pump, the slippers on it will have little rivers all through them because it got too much oil by volume because to use the synthetic oil the oil holes in the crankshaft need to be smaller because the oil flows freer .
It takes years for very experienced engineers to design & test the lubrication system in anything to ensure it all works properly with the lubricant it was designed t & tested with.
Then Joe Idiot comes along and thinks just because some race driver, big brested bimbo, whoever pops up on TV and says this stuff is better it will automatically make whatever they put it in run forever .'
Some times it might make no difference and some times it will
If it makes no difference then the user is pouring money down a hole & wasting the planets resources
If it does make a difference then that door swings both ways
Some times it will be better but most times it will be worse.
However Joe Idiot never take responsibility for his own stupidity and will blame anything else other than him using an unsuitable lubricant .
Barnets got blasted from pillar to post because their clutch plates were slipping all over the place then after several years it was found that it was the owners shoving fully synthetic oil into their motorcycles that was causing the clutches to slip .
A similar story with NSK who copped a ton of warranty claims for excessive wear in roller big end bearings and crankshaft bearings
Same story, the freer flowing synthetics floated the rollers so they slid on the outer race rather than rolling .
This was a particularly big problem for Ducatti Desmo engines and to a lesser extent Harleys , made more confusing to Joe I Know More Than The Design Engineers , as latter models used synthetic oils so it must be OK to use it in older modles , well it was not ."





"IF you don't understand the basics then all you can do is put blind faith that what some one else has said is factually correct .
As you are totally unwilling to put in the work to educate yourself then you will never actually understand how lubrication works.
I started my learning curve back in 1972 in the final years of my degree with a 2 hour lecture once a week for 13 weeks.
So that is 26 hours of face to face lectures + 13 more of tutorials + 13 more of practicals + 51 of pre lecture back ground reading before lectures.
How many hours have you spent on face book ?
As for mower engine as was previously stated is all using a synthetic or semi synthetic will do is cost you more money .
But if it makes you feel good then do it all it will do is waste your money .
While their history goes back decades fully synthetic oils were developed commercially for F1 racing where spending $ 1000 / gallon on oil is petty cash.
The engines in F 1 are pushed to their max they run at a lot higher temperatures than you mower ever will and every part has been cut down to the absolute minimum weight that will hopefully stay together for the length of a race and the manufacturing tollerances are substantially tighter than your mower ever will plus the oil plays a massive part in cooling the engine , or rather keeping the internals at a constant temperature , again totally irrelevent to an ir cooled mower engine and requires a bit of maths .
Viscious friction robs power from the tailshaft so anything that can reduce it is a big + in racing.
When we raced speedway all of the engines run total loss oiling and you do notice the difference in responce between that and the same engine mounted into a Hagon frame with an oil tank for short circuit
Synthetic oils they stayed as an exotic item even during the oil crisis of the 70's when I was in college . untill California tightened emission laws then all the major engine makers found that the thinner oils allowed the engine to crank faster so the first cylinder to do a full induction cycle fired reducing the unburned fuel passed out the tail pipe thus meet the starting emissions tests for almost no developement costs.
The engines were run to destruction & oil galleries modified where necessary.
The oil companies were then told we want engine oils with these properties of the fully synthetic oils for our production engines but we will only pay $X / gallon for them .
Thus the semi-synthetic ( and that name is total BS as the oil is not synthetic & never was ) oil was born by stripping the dreaded "Dino oil" into some componant parts then recombining them in proportions that would not normally happen and that is part & parcel of the normal processing of normal oils .
All that the oil companies did was add a couple of extra distillation processes to the regular processing .
True synthetic oil, created by reacting gasses together under pressure is a different animal but you won't find it at your local discount car parts shop.

The oil companies then had a premium product that cost marginally more than the standard product but because of the hype around it could be sold for 3 times the price of regular oil and pushed it hard by extolling its better properties, most of which was almost true but none of it of any real benefit for any engine not specifically designed to run it .
So you can run it for 3 times as long as you can run standard oil before it oxadises and starts to brake down chemically.
But that is not why you change your oil
You change it to remove the acid byproducts of combustion which happen regardless of the oil used and more importantly to remove the ultra fine particulates that errode your engine the exact same was as the Colorado river has erroded the Grand Canyon , but they fail to tell you that.

As for mower engine what can I say?
Probably once or twice a year an old worn out 2.5Hp side valve B & S powered mower comes into the shop with about 1/3 of the original oil still in the crankcase burned to the consistency of triple cream on a mower that the owner has had since the 80's and never so much as checked to oil let alone change it or even top it up.

And I would imagine every tech on here would have the same thing happen to them every year
Your 1981 B & S engine will run happily of full splash lubrication and there is a good chance it was actually full splash .
So your use of it just goes to show your absolute failure of understanding of the fundamentials of lubrication inside an engine.
The tug-o-war between adheason, coheasion & gravity let alone the significance of valence inbalance at the terminals of the molecules, and the difference the shape of them makes to the flow of the oil through the galleries.

And FWIW the only calculations in OLDS are just barely high school level and mainly about temperature flow & heat removal .
Get yourself a copy & read it then if you have understood what was written you will have just enough information to work out weather you are being fed fact, fiction or hype.
As an old text book it is probably everywhere used for $ 5 rather than the $ 50 I had to pay when it was a brand new publication.

Over the years I have found oil to be like religion and those who most strongly argue about it do so from a position of blind faith.

On one of the motorcycle forums we ran a survey to see just how much the members understood about oil
The question was
Do multigrade oils get thicker as they get hotter. yes / no
Over 90% got it wrong .

In my TAFE classe I used to ask the question
What is the purpose of the detergent molecules in oil ?
In the 11 years I taught not s single student got the question correct
We put the same question in the final exam and agin just about every student got it wrong
They all correctly described the mechanism of how they work but the students could not get the "detergents clean" BS out of their heads that the advertising companies had implanted .
And if you are wondering.
The function of the detergent is to carry away the particulates that they encounter & prevent them from combining
Secondary purpose is to make the contaminants close to the SG of the base oil so they will circulate freely within the oil to facilitate mechanical removal .
You will find that in OLDS as well no maths required."
Click to expand...
Total BS

I've run Mobil 1 5w30 or 10w30 automotive oil in my lawn mower engines since the 1980's and never had an issue with any of them, from single engine 3.5hp to 22hp V-twins, Briggs, Kohler, Tecumseh, Snapper, Kawasaki, and others. The engines all ran perfectly and some for a VERY long time before being sold. Family members have done the same. Never an issue.

Lots of misinfo out there on full synthetic oils. And confusion. Heck, "full synthetic" is not really what it used to be with Group III. So the idea that somehow synthetics cause problems is silly. Heck, I think some "conventional" oils and weights like PYB may have some GIII in them, too.

I am old enough to remember these, too: Synthetics must be used only on new engines (can't introduce them to engines that had a regular diet of conventional oil), synthetics cause leaks, synthetics can't mix with conventional oil, synthetic brands can't be mixed......and so the fairy tales went.
 
Sounds like this guy threw rose petals on the bedroom floor and had the owners manual nice and pretty on the bed.


Also i very much hope this guy never downloads the european owners manual for a 2015 prius which has the exact same engine as the us model because he's gonna faint when it says to use everything from a 0w-20 to a 20w-50. But muh oil holes.

i've thrown 25w-60 into a free push smoker and took it to mexico and it lasted another 4 years over there.
 
Air cooled engines (like lawnmowers) contaminate the oil more than water cooled, and non-synthetics are better than synthetics at keeping the particulates in suspension.
Mike Busch talks about this regarding aviation piston engines, which are similar to big lawnmower engines:

However, the leaded gasoline used in aviation makes this even more important, so it may not apply to a lawnmower, as you are running unleaded gas.
 
I remember stories of people blowing up their lawn mower engines in the 1970s by using 10W40 instead of SAE30.
Maybe that anecdote has evolved into distrust of anything except good ol' 30 weight.
 
10 years now on Valvoline Maxlife Full Synth 10w-30 for my OPE. Still running smooth as silk. No puffs of smoke ect.
 
carviewsonic said:
Didn't B&S recommend using synthetic 5w-30 in their more recent mower engines?
Click to expand...

Briggs & Stratton actually went to a “no oil change” model with their mower engines. They come from the factory with full synthetic, you never change it and when the engine grenades you just buy a new one.

A friend of mine is a lawn mower tech at a repair shop. The class he had to take on this B&S said the average home owners do not want to worry about maintence. They want to pull the rope, mow, and then sit their fat ass back down.
These engines are rated for only like 250 hrs before they are junk and the average home owner replaces their mower every 3-5 years.
 
My yard machines burns less with full synthetic. The lawn guy down the street cleaned the carburetor and changed the oil to a 30w oil. Smoked terribly. I put 10w-40 Royal Purple back in no more smoking.
 
I've been using Mobil 1 5w30 in my 12 year old Craftsman gas mower for years, no issues of any kind. As long as the hot viscosity number is the same, most OPE will run just fine, IMO. E.g. I would run 5w30 in an engine designed for SAE 30; and 0w40 in an engine designed for 10w40.
 
You mean “synthetic” group3 or group4? What is synthetic anyway, most of it is group3, so your lawnmower will be just fine
 
Spike555 said:
Briggs & Stratton actually went to a “no oil change” model with their mower engines. They come from the factory with full synthetic, you never change it and when the engine grenades you just buy a new one.

A friend of mine is a lawn mower tech at a repair shop. The class he had to take on this B&S said the average home owners do not want to worry about maintence. They want to pull the rope, mow, and then sit their fat ass back down.
These engines are rated for only like 250 hrs before they are junk and the average home owner replaces their mower every 3-5 years.
Click to expand...
I find that if you take care of them and change the oil, they can last virtually forever. My push mower (Honda GCV160 engine) is 17 years old and still runs just fine, like new. It has hundreds if not thousands of hours, as I used to mow a 2 acre meadow of grass with it on a regular basis. It will probably go another 17 years.
 
Spike555 said:
Briggs & Stratton actually went to a “no oil change” model with their mower engines. They come from the factory with full synthetic, you never change it and when the engine grenades you just buy a new one.

A friend of mine is a lawn mower tech at a repair shop. The class he had to take on this B&S said the average home owners do not want to worry about maintence. They want to pull the rope, mow, and then sit their fat ass back down.
These engines are rated for only like 250 hrs before they are junk and the average home owner replaces their mower every 3-5 years.
Click to expand...
That hurts my soul and I don’t even own a lawn mower anymore.
 
tolian21 said:
You mean “synthetic” group3 or group4? What is synthetic anyway, most of it is group3, so your lawnmower will be just fine
Click to expand...
I'm not sure that this guy knows the difference, since I asked him and he didn't reply to that. Personally I usually run m1 0w40 which is like 20% Pao and the gtl etc... If I remember correctly. No issues using that oil in any of my outdoor power equipment and it will be going in the snowblower too.
I had to have over 1000 hours on the 1981 3hp before it hit a huge bolt and bent the crankshaft. It didn't smoke at all even the last couple hundred hours I ran synthetic in it. I used it for a side job mowing lawns. The first 20 years would have been infrequent oil changes on 30 weight, but never run low.
 
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