Originally Posted by aquariuscsm
Pyb was the golden child forever on here. Is it still the king of dino oils?
Define dino. I guess you mean Group II. Both Group II and Group III are petroleum-based, so they are equally dino in that respect, even though Group III can be legally labeled synthetic in US.
I guess the four-letter derogatory word "dino" (no offense on actual dinosaurs) go back to early days of BITOG, when many people still didn't consider anything other than PAO (Group IV) and Group V base stocks synthetic.
Here is a long read on the history of "What is synthetic?" wars:
A defining moment for synthetics: Parts I & II -- Katherine Bui, Lubricants World, Oct/Nov 1999
All this said for our purposes, let's assume dino means Group II, as few oils use Group I these days except in small amounts as solvents. In fact let's drop the word dino and use Group II.
Group II oils excel in pressure - viscosity coefficient in comparison to Group III and PAO oils. By the way GTL is considered to be a Group III oil, albeit a very high-quality one.
While some downplay the importance of the pressure - viscosity coefficient, one BITOG user who rebuilds race engines told me that they got far lower wear rates in unambiguous UOAs with Group II than with PAO. Is it the pressure - viscosity coefficient that makes the difference? It's possible. That was his explanation and I couldn't come up with a different explanation myself.
Finally to answer OP's question, I don't even know if PYB is Group II. We know Pennzoil has used generous amounts of GTL in PYB, and many times PYB has been fully GTL.
What's the king of Group II then? It is conventional HDEO. Group II doesn't get any better than in a conventional HDEO in terms of the base-oil quality as well as the additive package. If you are OK with the viscosity in your climate, you can't find a better Group II oil than a conventional HDEO.