Castrol EDGE w/Syntec (Black Bottle)

[The Critic]

There is little discussion about this product on here.

I understand that there is a lot of Castrol hatred on this site, which is primarily due to the perception that Castrol pumps more $$$ into advertising than their R&D lab. However, I have yet to see any evidence to substantiate this belief.

At WalMart, the Castrol EDGE w/Syntec (black jug) is priced identically to the regular Mobil 1 jugs. Therefore, it can be assumed that Castrol EDGE w/Syntec is the Castrol's competitor to regular Mobil 1.

Is there any proof or circumstantial evidence that the Edge w/Syntec product is inferior to Mobil 1 in any way? Other than brand recognition for Mobil 1, why are people not choosing Castrol?

Side note: Here in Northern Cal, Castrol has a very positive reputation in the community and people would likely pick it over Mobil (not very prominent around here) in a heartbeat. It's also perceived as a "premium product" since only high-end dealers or indy shops use Castrol products.

 

[Brule]

Personally I'm not a fan of Castrol since it's a BP product due to that nonsense back in 2010. Their HM blend did nothing special for me either.

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: The Critic
Side note: Here in Northern Cal, Castrol has a very positive reputation in the community and people would likely pick it over Mobil (not very prominent around here) in a heartbeat. It's also perceived as a "premium product" since only high-end dealers or indy shops use Castrol products.


Here, it's not treated so much as a premium product, but one at an attractive price. Edge with Syntec is usually a tiny bit cheaper than M1. GTX can always be had dirt cheap up here. My Walmarts still have a bunch of jugs for around $11.88 each. As for Edge with Titanium, that's another matter - it's ridiculously overpriced, exceeding RP. If the retailers are wondering why their Titanium stuff on the shelves is still SM/GF-4 stock, there's why.

 

[mauric3]

Are the Castrol Edge with SPT able to handle 10k KM OCI?

Wonder what's better between the Castrol edge with SPT and Pennzoil Ultra?

Looking at Pennzoil's site.. it claims it cleans better tham mobil 1 , valvoline and castrol....

 

[bigjl]

Well I can say that Ford recommend Castrol products as do Volvo in the UK at least.

Ford and Volvo are also pretty rigid about OCI's.

What did surprise me was that severe service use does not indicate a shortened OCI but rather they say make sure you use Full Synth rather than a semi synth oil.

Premium protection is considered to be 0w30.

But most Ford and Volvo cars in the last 4/5 years, probably a lot longer, seem to use 5w30 energy conserving or fuel economy oils.

I personally believe they are both good quality products that can easily ru. To 12k miles in severe service if Full Synth.

10k km would be a walk in the park and I would run a semi synth Castrol oil to that OCI even in severe service.

10w40 Castrol Magnatec semi is on the short list for the next OC on the Taxi.

With the high miles, 176k since 2007 and indeed over 45k in the last year, I am slightly nervous about putting in Mobil 1 0w40.

Probably being over cautious.

I think Castrol Magnatec is similar in performance to Edge with Syntec and UK Castrol Edge FST is aligned with Edge Titanium.

No evidence for that just they seem to sit in similar price points.


The above comment referring to not using Castrol due to the disaster on that oil rig, owned and operated by somebody else, strikes me as strange though.

Especially as Obama repeatedly called BP, British Petroleum, which it hasn't been for many years, just kept the initials as a brand.

Funny how the can was firmly carried by the only company that could be considers foreign, rather than the company that did a substandard concrete job.

Not dissimilar to Air France trying to blame some engineers in the US for the Concorde disaster, which was caused by FOD, yes from an American plane but it would not have caused the disaster if Air France had modified their Concorde fleet in the same way as British Airways had done several years earlier, in other words reinforced fuel tanks.

This was not the first time a Concorde or indeed any plane had an issue with FOD.

The French government were trying to push blame "Offshore".

Ring any bells.

 

[EddieCairns]

In the UK Castrol Edge 0W/30 has added components to do 20,000 mile 2 year OCI. Castrol Edge 5W/30 is 10 to 12,000 mile 1 year OCI.

In the case of a number of VW engines the long service interval specify 0W and standard service interval use the 5W oil.

it appears that we may have a different mix in the oils in both the UK and Europe from the states.

eddie

 

[badtlc]

For the same price, I'd go with Castrol over M1.

 

[KCJeep]

I like Castrol, a LOT, and regardless of flavor the UOA's with it are usually very good as well. But yeah it doesn't get a ton of love around here.

As far as objecting to Castrol over the gulf spill, every single oil company I know of that actually drills has been very naughty at one time or another.

Valvoline is probably the only PCMO company that might have a leg to stand on in that regard since they don't drill, just buy and blend.

I won't even get started on our "president" my blood pressure has been doing better lately!

 

[cchase]

I think a lot of it comes down to perception of brand and product. Syntec is more expensive than Mobil 1 and I'm not sure what it offers over comparable Mobil oils. SOPUS seems to be able to offer competitive oils at a lower price point than Mobil, so they have a strong following. Syntec has GC and that's about it...

 

[Gabe]

Originally Posted By: The Critic
Other than brand recognition for Mobil 1, why are people not choosing Castrol?


Castrol has bad advertizing; think back to those awful 'think with your dipstick' commercials.

Castrol refuses to post all the information on their pds. They claim to do it so informed consumers cannot make informed decisions. If they don't have anything to hide, I don't understand why they are trying to hide it.

Mobil 1 sends me free hats. Every time I buy a couple cases of Mobil 1, I get a free hat (or jacket).

But, yea, Castrol GTX is, by far, the most popular conventional oil around here.

 

[uart]

It's funny how regionally different pricing can be. The retail price for Castrol Edge here is quite a lot cheaper than M1, at least in the 5W30 grade I'm using. M1 5W30 is almost $88

for a 5L jug at my local parts store whereas Edge A3/B4 "with titanium FST" is closer to about $68. Yeah I know, both crazy high prices compared to the US market, but that's normal here. Anyway, both of those price-tags sting, but the Edge a lot less so. Also I can occasionally get the Edge on sale for about $55/5L which brings it more in line with what I'm prepared to pay for oil.

Actually I just did my first oil change with Edge last week and am very pleased with the results so far. I went from a thinner winter oil (10.5 cSt @ 100C, hsht=2.9) to the much more robust Edge A3/B4 (12.0 cSt @ 100C, hsht=3.6) and it's smooth as silk and amazingly the MPG's have stayed totally steady at 56 MPG (Prius). This is my first run with the Edge and that MPG was just the one tankful, but so far it's looking good. I plan to run it for about 15000 km over our summer.

 

[accent2012]

Read the Castrol QA.

Lots of good info regarding the Castrol Syntec and how they are using a Group 3 (or is it Group 4?) oil - basically they downgraded the black bottle. However, the gold bottle (Castrol Edge w/ Titanium) is their "true" synthetic oil.

I'm on my second run of Castrol Edge (gold bottle) for my little car and it is loving it.

Originally Posted By: Brule
Personally I'm not a fan of Castrol since it's a BP product due to that nonsense back in 2010. Their HM blend did nothing special for me either.


The first sentence is stupid. If you boycotted because of an oil spill, then you should boycott Exxon and all of the others because they all regularly spill oil into our oceans and soils every year.

 

[KCJeep]

The way to get the gold bottle Edge is buy it on an AAP special with filter, they run it every couple of months and you get the top of the line Edge for about 5 bucks a quart that way.

Otherwise it's about 9!!! Ouch.

 

[buster]

Well, the reality is most of the oils from the majors that meet similar specs will be of similar quality. It then comes down to brand preference and marketing.

Historically, Castrol Syntec has been a [censored] synthetic oil. I'd say from 2000-2006, Syntec was probably the most overpriced full synthetic on the market. It did very poorly in the TEOST test and failed miserably in Honda's testing for HTO-06. They also have little data on their PDS's, never discussed base oils and at times used gimmicky marketing to sell oil. When I first starting using Mobil 1, Syntec was priced the same, yet offered much less performance. Castrol went to grp III first and their oils never had true long drain capability. Castrol dummed down synthetics and they get the credit for that IMO.

In addition, they do seem to focus more on advertising than putting out a good product. Are their products bad? No, they are average and will perform fine. Some of their oils may even be great.

Among the majors, I rank them as follows:

1. XOM
2. Shell
3. Valvoline/Ashland
4. Castrol

Now in terms of market share, Castrol was Mobil's #1 competitor. For those out west who think Castrol is great, um, yeah that's not really true at all.

 

[slo town]

Hello:

Aside from German Castrol, I've never been a big fan of the brand. However, I might have changed my mind recently. Here's why.

My wife and I bought new a 2010 Honda Element SC to haul our 150 pound Great Dane around. Out of the 30 or so cars I've owned in my life (I'm 60), I've never owned a Honda. Go figure.

One thing I've noticed about the Element is that when cold the motor clatters like a metal can filled with ball bearings. It doesn't sound like valve lash, rather, it sounds like piston slap. Most of the clatter goes away when it's fully warmed up, but it's always there to some degree.

One of our son's friends who works for a Honda dealership assures me the sounds are normal and the the relative lack of sound proofing in the Element makes it worse than it would be in, say, an Accord.

We rack up alot of miles on the thing and it has almost 50K miles in just 22 months. In an effort to reduce the engine clatter I've tried Motul 8100 Eco-lite 0w-20, Quaker State UD 5w-20, Pennzoil Ultra 5w-20, Pentospeed VS 0w-30, Kendall GT1 0w-20, and Castrol Edge with SPT 5w-20. There seemed to be no obvious change in noise and strange as it may seem, I swear the motor had more clatter with the thicker Pentospeed VS 0w-30 than it did with any of the 20 weights.

However, just last week I changed the oil and put in Castrol Edge with SPT 0w-20 (4 quarts) and 3/4 quart of German Castrol (for a total of 4.75 quarts).

I've driven the vehicle a dozen times since that latest oil change and I SWEAR THIS MIXTURE OF OIL HAS CONSIDERABLY REDUCED THE COLD START CLATTER.

I am always suspicious of people when they make claim like this......but......I really think this blend of oil has made a difference.

FWIW,

Scott

 

[aquariuscsm]

I`m running black bottle Syntec 10W40 in my Z and couldn`t be happier :^) Runs leaps and bounds smoother than the M1 I used forever it seemed.

 

[Brule]

Originally Posted By: accent2012
The first sentence is stupid. If you boycotted because of an oil spill, then you should boycott Exxon and all of the others because they all regularly spill oil into our oceans and soils every year.


Son, I'm a man, and a man has opinions. You have no problem with how BP reacted and acted, that's fine. I'm using GC now so clearly I'm not boycotting BP.

But let's make perfectly clear of an example of a true "stupid sentence."

Originally Posted By: accent2012
However, the gold bottle (Castrol Edge w/ Titanium) is their "true" synthetic oil.


...stupid in so many obvious ways

 

[addyguy]

Castrol claims black-bottle Sytec (now Edge w/SPT) is the best-selling syn in Canada, and I can beliweve it - it's everywhere, and goes on sale much more than others.

I've never used it, BUT I do like the change they made to the add-pack with SN - high Mg detegent like M1.

 

[mauric3]

Originally Posted By: addyguy
Castrol claims black-bottle Sytec (now Edge w/SPT) is the best-selling syn in Canada, and I can beliweve it - it's everywhere, and goes on sale much more than others.

I've never used it, BUT I do like the change they made to the add-pack with SN - high Mg detegent like M1.


Even though its on sale i'm pretty sure its still cheaper to get it across the border? I live in BC and cross the border to washington .. the oil in walmart is like half price of what we pay here in Canada..

Cdn tire has those 5L jugs for almost $50 before tax

too expensive

I wonder how the new Castrol edge with SPT when compared with the Pennzoil Ultra?

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: mauric3
Cdn tire has those 5L jugs for almost $50 before tax

too expensive


If you're paying $50 for Syntec in Canada, you're paying too much. It is on sale regularly, like at half that.

By the way, whenever you're in a WM or CT, check out the 4.4L jugs, rather than the 5L jugs. The 4.4L ones are often rolled back, whereas the 5L jugs seem to be perpetually locked at full price. The same applies to GTX, by the way.