Possible explanation of synthetic fuel savings and hp boost.

[RalphVa]

A guy who used to work for me in lube processing area quit and went to work for another company for a while. He's back in the fold now and reported some research the other company did.

He said they compared some taxi fleets running dino oil vs. with Mobil 1. The ones with Mobil 1 showed no valve train wear at all.

This explains how Mobil 1 gives both a hp boost and boost to fuel mileage: no friction in the valve train area (as well as the bearings, etc.).

Fuel mileage on my 2005 Tacoma jumped from 27ish to 28ish after the change to Mobil 1. It feels a tad more peppy, too.

Ralph

 

[KennyV]

With anyone that follows motor sports that has been common knowledge for some time.
Whenever you want to decrease or stop engine wear you switch to synthetic...
I think a lot of people with tractors feel they will not accumulate enough hours on their tractors to appreciate the reduced wear advantage.
Synthetic Delvac, Mobil1, Rotella, Valvoline, Amsoil, or any other high volume producer will deliver a great motor oil. KennyV

 

[sw03]

bingo--welcome to 1995 on the pep issue

I noticed a huge diff going to 0w-20 in Amsoil..Love it..

But on the flip, some will argue that a dino will give you the same wear results for a short time..

 

[Conservation]

Generalities are what get us in trouble in life. I think synthetics have there place, where the oil is stressed. In my race car, the synthetic seems to keep the methanol out of the oil better. So I use it there. My tractor is old, and the synthetic seems to keep the oil pressure light off when the tractor is hot and idling. So I use it there. I haven't seen a lick of difference in my daily drivers, and it is more expensive even with extended change intervals. So in my daily drivers, I use dino and change every 7,000 miles. We have three vehicles with close to 200,000 miles (one has considerably more), and no oil related issues that we are aware of. I don't think you can blindly throw your money into the crankcase and expect good things down the road. It just may not happen, or may have happened with the dino anyhow.

 

[ihookem]

I switched to Amsoil and gained .2 mi. per gallon from 10 fill ups before Amsoil and 10 fill ups after. It's an 05 GMC. diesel. I just got the oil test back and they said the oil is still good and told me there is no reason to change the oil with the numbers on the test results. The oil has 33k mi. on it. I change the Amsoil filter every 15-20 k mi. I notice my Kubota 7510 starts easier with Amsoil 5w30 in it when it gets below 0 degrees. It is probably cheaper in the long run to use synthetics.

 

[Conservation]

I would say that if you are getting that kind of mileage out of the synthetic, use it! Not sure that .2 is statistically significant even with 10 fill ups, but the change interval alone works in your favor. I absolutely agree on the cold weather starts. It doesn't get like honey like dino does. If you have a tractor that doesn't get used all the time, but you depend on it, that can save your bacon during a cold snap of under 0.

 

[Redneck in training]

Some time ago I read an article about oil for aircraft piston engines. The article claimed that quite few engines were damaged due to usage of synthetic oil despite the oil provides superior wear protection. The reason was that some airplanes are used only small number of hours a year. While the plane is sitting in the hanger synthetic oil runs down (apparently due to lower viscosity) and exposes metal surfaces to moisture with consequent corrosion. Therefore the author (aircraft engine rubuilder) recommended mineral oil for lightly used aircrafts. If this is true then synthetic oil is not good for machines that sit long time between uses.

 

[AMP762]

I knew a guy long ago that had a 59 Chevy 283,had 140000mi on it.The oil had never been changed.Every 2000 he changed the filter and added a qt.of oil.I would'nt recommend this,but the dino worked for him.

 

[ultrarunner]

BMW only goes with Synthetic... for whatever that's worth.

 

[Volfandt]

Some time ago I read an article about oil for aircraft piston engines. The article claimed that quite few engines were damaged due to usage of synthetic oil despite the oil provides superior wear protection. The reason was that some airplanes are used only small number of hours a year. While the plane is sitting in the hanger synthetic oil runs down (apparently due to lower viscosity) and exposes metal surfaces to moisture with consequent corrosion. Therefore the author (aircraft engine rubuilder) recommended mineral oil for lightly used aircrafts. If this is true then synthetic oil is not good for machines that sit long time between uses.

Now that is very interesting. Makes one wonder if those aircraft engines use oil filters w/the anti drain back valves.....

My F150 w/130K miles on it has only avg'ed around 50 -75 miles a week for approx the last 6 yrs now and I got concerned that the dino oil I was using may not provide the optimum cold startup flow that syn oil would offer so I changed over to it 15K miles ago (3 oil & OEM filter changes).
1st thing I noticed was the top end (4.6 SOHC) got quieter much faster. The rattleing/ticking went from approx 5 -10 secs to less than 5 secs and the engine seemed to run quieter as a whole in all temps. It doesn't use any more than it did before, approx 3/4 qt over 5k miles and it hasn't leaked yet so in my case changing over to syn improved my engines perfomance, at least at cold startup.

I never stopped to consider that syn would drain down more than dino but then again now that it's been mentioned I'm going to assume that thats what the anti drainback valve in the oil filter is supposed to stop. At least thast what I've been led to believe, but you never know