Leading Synthetic Oils

[Nismo280zEd]

Thought I would bring this up with all the marketing money being spent on Castrol's Syntec. (which btw is under FTC charges).

 

What motor oil and weight do you run in your Z or car?

I personally run Mobil One super synthetic and have for the life of the car. I've different weights from 15w40 to 10w50

 

However when i got online to look up the castrol hyp, i came across amsoil anybody here run it? thoughts?

It appears to be one step above mobil one.

-Ed

[Drax240z]

Amsoil... in everything.

[JMortensen]

I think synthetic is a waste of money in a non-turbo application because they don't generate heat like a turbo. I use Chevron Delo 15W-40. Cheap as hell (Costco carries it), it's designed for heavy diesel applications. It's not something you can brag about like using Amsoil or Mobil 1, but seems to do the trick for me.

[johnc]

For a street car I agree with Jon: any SJ grade 10W-40 works fine. Oils have come a long way since 1970.

 

For a road race car the extra margin of a synthetic comes in handy. Redline 20W-50 is what I ran in all my race L6s.

[dsommer]

CASTROL

 

I work for them so I must be biased.

 

What FTC charges?

 

David

[Hybrid240z]

My Z is still down...collecting parts, but I run Amsoil in everything else. I've been running Amsoil products for 4-5 years now and am sold on them.

[Bartman]

My understanding is that you can pick up some horsepower by doing nothing else than switching to synthetic oil. At the Royal Purple site they have the results of several independent tests that confirm horsepower gains.

 

http://www.royalpurple.com/techrp/summary.html

 

Is this true or not?

[Synlubes]

Thought I would bring this up with all the marketing money being spent on Castrol's Syntec. (which btw is under FTC charges).

 

What motor oil and weight do you run in your Z or car?

I personally run Mobil One super synthetic and have for the life of the car. I've different weights from 15w40 to 10w50

 

However when i got online to look up the castrol hyp' date=' i came across amsoil anybody here run it? thoughts?

It appears to be one step above mobil one.

-Ed[/quote']

 

I have used Amsoil in everything I`ve owned (including mowers) since 1981, before that I used old school Castrol.

It is the best synthetic on the market! Hell, they started the "synthetic lubricants" thing 33 years ago with the first automotive use synlube.

Amsoil will/has tested their products against all others and published the results, funny how the other companies wont do that with their products.

There are products designed for lots of different applications.

Be aware, not all synthetics are full synthetic, watch out for the advertising.

 

More info can be found using the links below.

[DemonZ]

I don't really like changing the oil and filter every 3-5K, so for me the higher intervals of synthetic pays off.

 

 

I seem to recall that from 2 separate studies, bang for the buck in general all around use, you could not beat Mobil 1, specifically in the 0-40 weight.

 

 

In one home brew study, they took samples of oil at various intervals and had them analyzed by an independent lab. They only tested M1 and Amsoil. Not totally scientific, but pretty good.

 

 

http://neptune.spacebears.com/cars/stories/oil-life.html

 

 

The other study, was done by a Chemistry Phd. who specialized in lubricants and worked for McLaren's F1 program sometime around Y2k when he published his piece. I believe he lives in AU. He published a 10? page article that had all the major brands, and many foreign ones I've never heard of. The tests were exclusively synthetics. He charted the results and it seemed like the de-facto study at the time. He stated that the oil corporations did not like publishing such research, but that this was all his own extensive independent research. Of interest was engineering different lubes in qualifying vs. actual racing in F1 cars.

 

 

Unfortunately the link is dead and the chart attachment I saved doesn't work. What I came away with was M1 0-40 was the best all around oil for general purpose grocery getter, hammer it on the street, extended drain interval, kind of driving.

 

 

As an aside, my personal observation with Castrol Syntec on a carbed 88 Tercel (used GF's as test car for Castrol) was that "crud" built up under the oil cap, where as when I switched to M1, the valve cover seemed to stay much cleaner. Another hear say story was my dad's friend was a semi-pro racer in the 80's, he swore by M1. --I don't own their stock, or have any financial connection with them.

[john kosmatka]

I use amsoil synthetic usually in my cars, but the local supplier has stopped carrying it so I now use castrol syntec, of which from what I can tell is just as good. But yeah I believe in synthetic oil for turbo cars, my 93' saab has 280k miles and runs like a top, used amsoil in that up to the change to castrol.

[Guest ON3GO]

used amsoil before and will use it again.

local oil company in houston sponsored my Z so im gonna try there oil. Matrix..

lol will see how it works.

 

mike

[rudypoochris]

used amsoil before and will use it again.

local oil company in houston sponsored my Z so im gonna try there oil. Matrix..

lol will see how it works.

 

mike

 

Local oil company... Well it is texas so i guess.....

[Pop N Wood]

.... What I came away with was M1 0-40 was the best all around oil for general purpose grocery getter, hammer it on the street, extended drain interval, kind of driving.....

 

Better in what sense? And how good is good enough?

 

Premium gas is "better" than regular, but if your car doesn't need it you are wasting your money buying it.

 

Synthetics are "better" in that they last longer and don't break down with temperature as readily. But they sure cost a lot more and may add so little to the longevity of the engine that what they provide doesn't offset the cost. At least that is what every study I have ever seen says.

 

As long as it has the SAE seal of approval on it then it is good enough for a street car. Figure those guys must know something.

 

And don't the synthetic manufactures recommend chaning the filter every 5K miles anyway? So they are not saving that much work.

[DaleMX]

Personally I dont mind spending an extra 20 bucks every 3 months on my car. That's nothing compared to disaster like a small head gasket leak that breaks down the cheap oil in your car then kills the bearings. And when it comes to the life of the oil the only way to really tell is to have it tested. Check out the "Bob is the oil guy" link below.

 

http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/whatisoilanalysis.htm

[deMideon]

Well from personal experience there are 2 things I have noticed about synthetic oil vs regular. My father had a couple of datsun's that went over 150,000 miles, when I rebuilt the one with synthetic (amsoil I believe) it was very clean inside, very little varnish and no crud. BTW my father changed the oil in both on the same miles schedule.. The one that ran regular oil had significant crud and varnish. So that's the first thing I saw. I also worked at a Z car shop in Nashville for a while and he had run some tests on oils (he also sold an additive which is what this was really for!). I'm sure some of you have seen it, a motor spinning a bearing race, and an arm with a bearing on one side and a spring scale on the other. There is oil in a small cup around the bearing race. So you fill it up with regular oil and put a load on it(pull on the spring scale) and at about 3 lbs you stop the motor from turning. the bearing has a pretty good size dent in it as well. Change the bearing and race and this time add synthetic (don't remember which one he used... Mobil 1 maybe), do it again, this time the motor locks up at 8 lbs, and the dent in the nearing is much smaller. Not much of a test, but to me it shows that under a load the synthetic performs better. These 2 reasons are why I why I always use synthetic!

[rudypoochris]

BTW i am pretty sure synthetic never breaks down vs dino which will.

[DemonZ]

I realize this is almost religious, but I must clarify...

 

 

pop-n-wood wrote:

 

<

 

I think everyone can agree that synthetics are superior to dino oil in MOST ALL technical aspects, i.e. film strength, viscosity stability, contamination suspension, vapor point, resistance to build varnish, chemical stability, etc... That is the sense of "better" I am using.

 

 

The heart of the argument is economics. If cost weren't a factor, surely then there is no such thing as over-protection. Everyone would have the maximum. But since everything costs money, SAE stamps are really MINIMUM standards for a class. Simple as that. It does not say how far an oil can exceed it.

 

 

It's a benefit/risk issue. The contention is, are synthetics "worth" it. For my purposes I'm willing to pay for the added protection and extended oil changes, you may not. If you looked at the link, you'd see that those 2 synthetic oils are really quite tough, and your sited 5k change interval "recommendations" have built in wide safety margins.

 

 

I wish someone else had saved the PH.d paper, it was really quite good. Hopefully I can post it at some point. I would think someone else here has read it.

 

 

demidion- that is what my dad's buddy had said too.

[Pop N Wood]

Funny how people always try to ignore costs when they argue what is "best".

[clarkspeed]

More info on oils:

 

http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=102054

[Mikelly]

Couple of comments...

 

I was an Amsoil dealer until this past July. It is some of the best stuff on the market at any price, right up there with Redline and Royal Purple synthetics. And right up there with Mobil1, which is where the problems started for me...

 

Mobil1 is 2 miles down the street at the local WALMART. Amsoil is a drive to Richmond, or paying extra to have it shipped. I did some oil analysis on my Amsoil oil and found the stuff to be very good for upwards of 12-14K miles on all three of my vehicles. We even did an oil analysis on oil that had 7K miles on it and a track day. It came back GOOD for more use.

 

I then went to http://www.bobistheoilguy.com and started reading and found that most group 4/5 oils that are true synthetics are going to give you this kind of protection. So I will be swapping everything over to Mobil1 as soon as my storage cabinet is empty of the Amsoil I've been using. The only reason I'm doing this is for conveniance. The cost of a case of Amsoil Series 2000 0W30 isn't that much more than the cost of 12 quarts of Mobil1 (Maybe $10 per case?). But the drive to Richmond to go get it is not "conveniant", so there you have it...

 

Mike