Who is running conventional oil?

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Johnny,
We won't sit on the back porch until after we get done Striper fishing. Lake is only 3 miles from the house. Or black bass, white bass/hybreds. With 3 boats I can find one running.
I went to high school in Reedsburg by the way.

PATMAN: Back to your original question, I am waiting on my bottles from Dyson Analysis and I will have results on my dino oil with 4500 miles on it. This is 15W40 from my truck, and I won't be doing any changes, just analysis. I am going to run this until analysis says to change.

[ July 02, 2002, 12:24 AM: Message edited by: 59 Vetteman ]
 
Before getting back to the subject: I have had many problems from customers who put in Fram filters. I have cut them too, and pictures are posted on my site.
Although I sell other brands, I think Pennzoil is a good product in the U.S. But they don't have the same products or standards around the world.
Now the subject:
I have hundreds of analysis of Group I oils as it makes up 80% of my volume. I try to keep people between 4000 and 6000 miles or 350-400 hours due to dirt contamination. Analysis is more useful for programing maintenance than for seeing how the oil hold up, but it shows that as well.
In the last 500 or so analysis I have on these (SJ/CH-4)(Just got my SL/CH-4 inventory last week)show very little wear unless there is an outside contaminant. There are "problems" of viscosity (one grade) on two types of engines "Deutz" air-cooled tend to increase visc. after 300 hours or so, and Nissan stationary powerplant engines shear around that point. This week we put Delo in about a dozen of those engines, so in about a month or so I will see the difference.
I have also tested several other major brands that have either increased or decreased out of grade at 200 hours and a couple at 600 miles.
Outside contaminants found: Dirt from poor filtration, Sodium from pressure washing engines, agricultural residues from spraying crops, diesel from leaking injectors, hydraulic fluids and gear oils from using the same pumps or measuring cans.
 
Did my first oil & filter change today on 2002 Pontiac Grand Am with the Ecotec 2.2 four cylinder engine.
Dealer gave free oil & filter change at about 2500 miles. Their free oil was 10/30 whatever came out of the bulk container(Goodwrench??) They did replace the filter with OEM AC Delco PF 2244G which is a paper-only filter cartridge,(easy disposal)I burned it along with some wastepaper.

After many,many, hours browsing this and other forums my choice of oil was 5-W-30 Chevron Supreme,Dino SL. Our car befor this one,a 1995 Saturn SW1 had Mobil 1 put in at first oil change and every five or six K thereafter I sold it this year after 112000 happy miles.

I may go 5000 miles befor the next oil change and may do an oil analysis at that time.

Maybe I will be able to read here about some other SL Dino oil analysis befor my next oil change??

Bill
 
I think I should add some questions to my above post.

1. Any thoughts on going 5,000 miles befor changing oil & filter again? To many miles or to few?

2. This little 2.2L engine has a crankcase that took within 3 ounces of five full quarts of oil befor reaching the full mark on the dipstick.
Is a large crankcase with a small engine conducive to long oil life? long engine life? Or both??

Bill
 
quote:

Originally posted by Bill Williams:

Is a large crankcase with a small engine conducive to long oil life? long engine life? Or both??


I think a small engine with a larger than normal crankcase capacity would have both a longer engine life and less stress on the oil so it could go longer intervals too.
 
yes, in general, the larger the sump in relation to the engine size & load, the longer you can go. But 5,000 miles of short hops might be too much, and 5,000 miles of 60 mph interstate would be too short.
 
96 F-150 302 V-8 pushrod motor. Had since new every 3000 miles a Motorcraft FL-1A and Motorcraft 10W-30 for first 100k. After that went to Motorcraft 15W-40. Truck now has 214k. Still runs great.
 
I have been using conventional Valvoline in my cars since I started driving. My grandfather worked for a large trucking fleet that used nothing but Valvoline products with excellent success. One thing that really sold me on Valvoline was when I did a valve job on a 20hp Onan garden tractor engine with 750 hours on it. This engine has had nothing but HPO SAE 30 oil and still had the hone marks in the cylinders. I may get blasted, but I think for the 95% of all drivers all the oil hype is a waste of time. Use a name brand oil, a good filter, change it every 4,000 to 5,000 miles and drive on.
 
Slickracer, you are correct. For most people if they use conventional oil and change it every 4-5k they will still not have engine troubles for at least 100-150k. But for those of us that want to do extended intervals, or get that engine to last 200k+, we just want something a little better than what Walmart sells. The new SL oils are vastly improved, that is true, but there are still better oils available for those that want to look further.
 
"1. Any thoughts on going 5,000 miles befor changing oil & filter again? To many miles or to few?"

The only way you will know for sure is to do used oil analysis.

Here is my past experience: OTC dino oils have had economic additive packages in which the additives have gone south somewhere between 3k and 5k miles.

Enter Redline, Amsoil, Neo, Schaeffer's and other private special blenders who not only provided the best base oil(s) they could find, but they started paying attention to the additive package and purchased the highest quality additives they could find from Ethyl, Emory, Lubrizol, and others additive manufacturers to place in their formulated products.

Now, the OTC's were losing some ground to these private enterprises, so they fished around and started coming up with base oil gimmicks, such as Group III, and sold them at costs commensurate with the true synth's, or used so-called special molecules to enhance their product.

Now, I am willing to grant that the later SJ/SL OTC dinos have improved, but until I see some used oil analysis, I am staying away from straight dinos. As Patman stated, we not only want our cars to run good, we want them to last past 150,000 miles without major repair. When I say major repair, I mean rings, bearings, and seals, valve jobs, etc.

One of the reasons I think the GF-4 spec was delayed was not due to engine design, but to the lack of sufficient oil performance and engine protection from current, conventional oils, even the GIII's.

You have to realize that the OTC's are competing for the Mr. Everyday motorist. They need to sell at the lowest price to snatch the customer. Conventional Base oils are about $0.45 a gallon; it's the additive package and the pretty packaging of Red, Gray (Metallic), or Yellow (Canary) plastic bottles that raises costs. So how does an OTC compete; hype the heck out of it with some smiling racing driver standing between two former beauty queens or the local stripper, and use the lowest cost additive package available.

BTW, I will have to admit, I do prefer the Pennzoil canary (Yellow) bottles.
 
I just built a new engine for my 72 Corvette, 383 stroker. I chose to use Pennsoil (10w40) with the lubricant Synergyn for the assembly and break-in. Many ppl that I know who have built these hipo engines seem to have been running into numerous problems that are oil and effective lubrication related. With this combo the engine just keeps getting better. Thought as a newbie I would pass this along.

[ July 30, 2002, 01:20 AM: Message edited by: gdh ]
 
I had an oil analysis done on the factory-fill oil in my Acura RSX at 5,000 mi

High silicon is normal in a new engine. Every new car I have had has had elevated silicon up to around the 20,000 mile mark. Seals etc. are breaking in. If the silicon is not accompanied by higher wear metals you are fine. It is when the iron, aluminum etc. are high coupled with silicon that you have a dirt ingestion problem.
 
I realize that now, but I'm not sure what "high" is on my car as far as wear metals go-- especially since it was break-in oil. I'll continue to take samples although I doubt I'll be using conventional oil again.
 
I have a lot of customers running Group I oils and where there are no engine problems (air filters, water entry from engine cleaning, fuel dripping, etc.) there are excellent results even on the ones going 6,000 miles. Here is one from last week with 6,000 miles. Group I 15w40, SJ/CH-4
Volvo truck hauling trailers over dirt mountain roads.
Iron 30
Chrom 2
lead 9
tin 0
Alum 2
Nic 0
silver 0
Silicon 3
Boron 5
Sodium 6
Mag 42
Calcium 3307
Barium 1
phos 1288
Zinc 1371
visc 14.3
soot 0.8
tbn 6.9
results were almost identical to april but slightly higher lead.

The advantage to changing out earlier is garanteeing that when something goes wrong, it is wrong for less time. Analisis has caught a lot of blown head gaskets, bad filters, leaking or poorly installed injectors, etc.

[ July 30, 2002, 04:39 PM: Message edited by: widman ]
 
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