A Brand New Perspective. Digging Into the Timeless Question, “Which Oil is Better?”
Blackstone looks into its collection of oil sample data to examine the question of which brand of oil is better.
https://www.blackstone-labs.com/Newsletters/Gas-Diesel/July-1-2017.php
I found a this very interesting article and worth the time to read, and I thought that some of you guys might as well.
Which Oil is Better? Blackstone looks at brands...
- Thread starter Daverino
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Years ago I remember reading an article from Consumer Reports where they had done a test of different brands of motor oil on NYC taxis. They found similar results if I remember correctly and the conclusion was to get your oil changed with whatever brand is cheaper and meets specs. That was the first scientific article I read about motor oil and it is funny that this article by a major oil lab has come to the same conclusion years later.
The one thing that the article did not mention was the type of driving done by different types of oil buyers. I would be willing to bet that there is a correlation with the average Amsoil buyer and the type of driver who drives more miles at one time. People who have long commutes and spend more time in their vehicle might be more likely to want an oil that can extend their oil change interval. And I think that it is pretty well agreed that longer driving at one time (fewer heat cycles) is easier on an engine. Just a thought.
LOL.. that conversation he mentions with the customer.. I know I can't be the only one whose first thought when reading it was "Was this conversation with Engineer20?"
Excerpt:
Him: “So, I’m using Rotella in this engine... is that the best choice?”
Me: “It certainly seems to be doing a good job. You’d
probably get good results with whatever oil you used,
but this is working fine.”
Him: “Would I be better off if I switched to Mobil 1?”
Me: “Well, you could, but I wouldn’t expect much change in
engine wear. We find that the type of oil typically
doesn’t matter when it comes to wear metals.”
Him: “What about Amsoil? I’ve heard
that’s the best oil out there.”
Me: “That’s a good brand as well. We just don’t tend
to see much difference in wear metals between different
oil types, so whichever one you want to use is fine.”
Him: “Okay, but what about that new Pennzoil Ultra stuf
f? I’ve heard that’s a much better product. Is that
better than Amsoil, or not?”
Me: [sigh...]
Lol. Yeah, I used to stick with M1 but now i use whatever is on liquidation at autozone. Im good for 2-3 years now...but need to stop hoarding during sales. LOL
Nice study of wear metals, so I guess it answers the question that all oils are about equal (enough equal) to each other in that department.
I think user SonofJoe said one time, and I've been saying, its how clean your ring pack area, pistons, are that could be more different.
Not saying we all could get stuck rings, yet extra oil consumption due to a gummy ring pack later in life has occurred for some engines.
We have heard this before. So it rings true. Nice article. Thanks!!!
Interesting quote:
"This got us curious, so this time, when creating the bar graph for the iron
wear-rate (Fig. 9), we put them in order of average oil interval, and
wouldn’t ya know it, there’s a pretty clear correlation: the longer the oil
is in use, the lower the wear rate."
MolaKule
Staff member
Originally Posted By: Linctex
Interesting quote:
"This got us curious, so this time, when creating the bar graph for the iron
wear-rate (Fig. 9), we put them in order of average oil interval, and
wouldn’t ya know it, there’s a pretty clear correlation: the longer the oil
is in use, the lower the wear rate."
Originally Posted By: MolaKule
Originally Posted By: Linctex
Interesting quote:
"This got us curious, so this time, when creating the bar graph for the iron
wear-rate (Fig. 9), we put them in order of average oil interval, and
wouldn’t ya know it, there’s a pretty clear correlation: the longer the oil
is in use, the lower the wear rate."
Originally Posted By: Linctex
Originally Posted By: MolaKule
Originally Posted By: Linctex
Interesting quote:
the bar graph for the iron wear-rate (Fig. 9)
Would of been interesting to see some results against cheap/budget oils, e.g. supermarket own brand oils; when I saw a photo of the budget oil in the start of the, I was hoping to see such an oil in the results somewhere, maybe not a significant enough sample set for a useful comparision.
If a car/engine recommends a certain spec oil and the oil meets that spec, to me it no surprise there is no wear issues for normal usage, normal change intervals.
Want better protection? Forget the brands...just use a slightly higher viscosity. Ford just nailed this down.
This report is good news for those who use brands like Supertech, Harvest King and Smitty's.
What this does not show is the bias due to driving styles. What if some one often pushes their vehicle to its limits, maybe even racing, and because of this chooses to use a high performance, top line oil? Contrast that with some one with a long easy highway commute, and uses a bargain brand oil? The bargain oil would definitely show less wear, just because of the easy driving style while the premium oil would definitely show high metals because of highly aggressive driving.
People who do oil analysis are not a random population sample. So these results cannot automatically be extended to every driver and every vehicle. [Aside - It's well known in medical statistical analysis that volunteers are different from the base population and typically have much better outcomes that the base population. If you want to live a long healthy life, on average you should be: a volunteer, well off, and a non smoker.]
What they've clearly shown is that people who do oil analysis are typically using an appropriate oil for their driving conditions.
I suspect however that the results are more generalizable than that and believe that any oil that meets the manufacturers specifications and is changed at an appropriate interval will result in minimal wear metals. That's what I do with my vehicles. My BMW gets a steady diet of a BMW LL-01 oil (Syntec 0W-30 seems to be the only oil I can find at a half ways reasonable price) and the Accord gets whatever (brand name) 0W-20 SN oil is available.
An interesting read, basically what they say is any oil that meets your cars specification will perform about the same, and different additive packages have more to do with OCI than wear performance. A very good write up from out friends at Blackstone Labs.
Which Oil Is Better?
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Something about those tests I just noticed,all of the reports were using top of the line name brand oils,whereas in the first picture for the article,they have s jug of Supertech next to Pennzoil Platinum and Mobil 1. A little misleading if you ask me. A true "oil is oil" test would be to compare Supertech or some other generic bottom of the line store brand to Amsoil or Redline.
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