Would synthetic oil benefit me?

[sw03]

Oil changing and "sooper dooper wonderfully enhanced" oils are SO oversold.

Engines really HAVE come a long way.
Machining tolerances are tighter, things don't slop around so much, piston ring gaps are smaller, there is less blow by, less contamination from by products of combustion,,, on and on and on.
Bearings are assembled by group match, or "binning" of tolerance range.

Yes, it doesn't matter.
If anything needs changing it is the "mileage" guideline for oil change intervals.
I think "fuel gallons" would be a better measure.
It is probably one of the few measures of total work done, or total stress experienced by an engine.
You drive with a light foot, you get good gas mileage, you can go longer between oil changes.
You drive with a lead foot, you get poor gas mileage, you need to change the oil more often.

I agree somewhat but yea, engine are built better but oils today must take a lot more heat, junk for CAFE standards etc.

I think super duper oils are worth it for increase in MPG's, better starting in cold temps, higher resistance to soot, less burn off etc.

Are they needed in all apps, nope but for me the super duper oils are a time and engine saver. YMMV

 

[DarkBlack]

Oil changing and "sooper dooper wonderfully enhanced" oils are SO oversold.

Engines really HAVE come a long way.
Machining tolerances are tighter, things don't slop around so much, piston ring gaps are smaller, there is less blow by, less contamination from by products of combustion,,, on and on and on.
Bearings are assembled by group match, or "binning" of tolerance range.

Yes, it doesn't matter.
If anything needs changing it is the "mileage" guideline for oil change intervals.
I think "fuel gallons" would be a better measure.
It is probably one of the few measures of total work done, or total stress experienced by an engine.
You drive with a light foot, you get good gas mileage, you can go longer between oil changes.
You drive with a lead foot, you get poor gas mileage, you need to change the oil more often.

What say oil changes every 500 gallons of gas burned ?
Maybe 300 for diesel engines ?

I used to burn 3 gallons per hour in a boat, the recommended oil changes were every 50 hours - that would have been about every 150 gallons of gas.
That seemed too short an oil change interval - to me, but boats CAN be run hard for hours on end, so maybe others burned 3 or 4 times as much.
(-:

I agree on the fuel burned being a much better barometer than mileage. Even better would be fuel burned/volume oil in crankcase. This would compensate for engine size.

 

[Reg]

I agree on the fuel burned being a much better barometer than mileage. Even better would be fuel burned/volume oil in crankcase. This would compensate for engine size.

GM went from 7500 miles between changes to a counter that does some complex algorithm - figures number of cold starts, number of times the engine doesn't get to full operating temp, etc.
It wasn't popular, too many people were getting 10,000 or so miles between suggested oil changes and they DID NOT like it.
Old habits, old superstitions, die hard (-:

 

[clemsonfor]

GM went from 7500 miles between changes to a counter that does some complex algorithm - figures number of cold starts, number of times the engine doesn't get to full operating temp, etc.
It wasn't popular, too many people were getting 10,000 or so miles between suggested oil changes and they DID NOT like it.
Old habits, old superstitions, die hard (-:

It was just hard for the Lay person that use to change their oil every 3K miles for the last 35 years to buy that new $50K truck and the thing telling them that they only need to do it evry 8-12K miles. They were worried about there high dollar truck tearing up. Throw that in with the conspiricy theorists that think its GM wanting to sell them another truck when that one blows up early cause of "long oil change intervals".

 

[lostcause]

Throw that in with the conspiricy theorists that think its GM wanting to sell them another truck when that one blows up early cause of "long oil change intervals".

conspiracy theorists? on the internet? you're joking - right?