GlueGuy
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2001
- Messages
- 1,654
- Tractor
- Kubota B7500
I am compelled to respond.
I also fly aircraft, and this subject comes up very often in a publication that I get (Light Plane Maintenance). They have done a lot of study of this, and they have determined that synthetics do have (generally) better lubricity than regular oils. They do not recommend (pure) synthetics for aircraft using 100LL because of the previously mentioned problems with lead. There are some semi-synthetics which they think are pretty good.
However, and this is the bottom line for me), they do not recommend extending service intervals. The main issue is that the suspended dirt and soot and other particles are still in there, and changing oil is very cheap insurance. This is especially true on aircraft engines (for example a new TTIO540 Lycoming I was just reading about costs about $68,000). However, the numbers they ran on different oil change intervals versus the cost of an overhaul was so lopsided as to be ridiculous.
So I get the appropriate API service oil, and I change it on a very conservative basis. Next subject please. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif
The GlueGuy
I also fly aircraft, and this subject comes up very often in a publication that I get (Light Plane Maintenance). They have done a lot of study of this, and they have determined that synthetics do have (generally) better lubricity than regular oils. They do not recommend (pure) synthetics for aircraft using 100LL because of the previously mentioned problems with lead. There are some semi-synthetics which they think are pretty good.
However, and this is the bottom line for me), they do not recommend extending service intervals. The main issue is that the suspended dirt and soot and other particles are still in there, and changing oil is very cheap insurance. This is especially true on aircraft engines (for example a new TTIO540 Lycoming I was just reading about costs about $68,000). However, the numbers they ran on different oil change intervals versus the cost of an overhaul was so lopsided as to be ridiculous.
So I get the appropriate API service oil, and I change it on a very conservative basis. Next subject please. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif
The GlueGuy