ENGINE OIL

motor-oil-lowres-3428

But above all else, make sure you change your oil regularly, following the recommendations in your owner’s manual. The greatest oil in the world eventually fills with contaminants and breaks down from heat and friction. Failure to change the oil in your engine regularly will eventually cause serious damage (and void your warranty).

Motor oil is a tough subject because of the complex chemistry involved and the difficulty seeing the actual effects of different formulations or brands. People can be pretty passionate about their favorite brands, too. To solve this puzzle, I threw out everything I thought I knew about oil and spent two weeks thinking about little else. I read reviews and evaluations from magazines and consumer groups, then consulted with techs at oil manufacturers and labs that perform oil analysis. I talked to mechanics who see the effects of oil use and misuse on every possible make and model of car. I even spoke to veteran race engine builder Ron Hutter.The fact is, there’s very little difference between different brands of motor oil. Consumer Reports said as much in 2010: “The brand of motor oil matters little, but its viscosity grade (10W-30, for example) is important. Use only what the owner’s manual specifies. Using the wrong [viscosity] oil can lead to reduced lubrication and shorter engine life. If the manual says to use synthetic oil, do so. Contrary to what some believe, adding a synthetic oil to regular oil won’t harm the engine, but there’s also no benefit in doing so.”Blackstone Laboratories has been testing motor oil using inductive coupled plasma spectrometry since 1985. I asked company president Ryan Stark if he’d seen any oils that performed consistently better or worse, based on his test results. “No. If you stick with a name brand oil, you really can’t go wrong. If you did a side by side test between two brands you might see a 1 or 2 parts per million difference in the metals in the results.”Royal Purple manufactures what they call “super-premium motor oils for consumer use.” From the company’s origins in the 1980s as a developer of industrial lubricants, they expanded into racing oil and eventually consumer motor oil in 2003. Jim Morrissey, a junior automotive technical support engineer with Royal Purple, was candid about the challenges in evaluating motor oils when I asked him how a consumer could choose between two oils on a store shelf. “That’s one of the difficulties, actually. There are ways of determining a minimum standard, like the API certification, but when you’re dealing with a premium product, there really is no third party available to evaluate the product. Sometimes a magazine or TV show will do a side-by-side analysis, but it’s pretty much up to the consumer. Determining which is ‘the best’ can be nebulous. It depends what you’re looking for.”Even Valvoline’s own FAQ for their synthetic SynPower has a hard time coming up with any appreciable differences between brands: “How does Valvoline SynPower compare to Mobil1 and Amsoil? Valvoline’s SynPower synthetic motor oils meet and exceed the same specifications as these two products.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement.I spoke with Bob Gugino, owner of Bison Automotive in Kenmore, NY (he’s the guy I take my car to when it’s a problem I can’t fix myself). Bob’s been a mechanic for 35 years. He told me, “As far as brand names, Valvoline, Mobil, Castrol, there’s not a whole lot of difference between them. They all make a lot of claims, that their oil is better at this or that, but they all have to meet a certain spec.”I also spoke with Kevin Knox, an auto technician at Mullane Motors in Lockport, NY with 30 years of experience. Because he works at a dealership that also sells used cars, Knox has been under the hood of many different makes and models of cars. “A lot of people have preferences, I don’t know if one brand is superior. I look at the requirements of the vehicle.”Even on internet forums dedicated to motor oil, where people can get downright religious about their favorite brands, you’ll find plenty of “oil is oil” advice. A user named SteveSRT8 at the Bob is the Oil Guy forum said in 2012, “Seriously, we run a fleet with all 6.0 [liter engines] and a few 5.3s and they run nearly forever. Our secret? Pick whatever synthetic is on sale and change when the OLM says to. Pretty simple. And we have as severe a duty cycle as anything in the entire world.”

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