I found this article to be very informative. I have been a mechanic all my life and it changed my thinking.http://www.scuderiaciriani.com/rx7/oil.html I don't know a lot about computors and I am new to this forum so I hope this works. Scroll down the page to--" The suprising truith about motor oil".

 

Yes, that Consumer Reports article was a really good one because CR came to their conclusions by actually MEASURING engine wear DIRECTLY (via weighing the engine parts subject to wear) rather than relying on oil analysis to infer the amount of wear.

Specialty lube salesmen, on the other hand, never show the public actual engine wear measurement data.
They hide this critical information from the public because if the public ever found out the specialty lubes don't significantly reduce wear compared to ordinary conventional oils, sales of specialty lubes would crash.

 

It's too bad the results for the synthetic oils proved to be inconclusive in their testing so I guess the jury is still out on that one (although thy did say it flows better in colder temps, but perhaps a NY City cab isn't the best to test this sorta thing as they are pretty much running 24 / 7). Additionally, they did say that the engine problems were NOT caused by the extended drain intervals.......This info is still several years old & I beleive Mobil 1 (as an example) has 'reformulated' their synthetic oil since then to the 'SuperSyn' formulation. They might want to consider next time to do BOTH the 5W30 & 10W30 grades. Overall a decent write up, but I've read that years back.

 

Thank you for the link Giles. I just " copy " and " paste " the link on the FAQ thread. I will leave this thread open for discussion without moving the whole thread to the FAQ. Great post.

 

24 F. this a.m. here, 17 predicted tomorrow and Mobil 1 flows in both the GS and RX......................

 

Mobil 1 5W-30 flows just a trifle better at those temps compared to conventional 5W-30. At.-20 degrees F below zero Mobil 1 5W-30 is like honey, but technically Mobil can still say it "flows". So the public wrongly assumes Mobil 1 5W-30 still flows freely at -20 degrees F

 

I quite agree..........but that temp is not a facator where I live (thank God!).

 

saber, Mobil 1 5w-30 still flows better than conventional 5W-30 at -20 degrees. At that temp conventional 5W-30 flows like real think molasses (worse than honey).

sj

 

I did a similar test a while back with the 'deep' freezer......this has been covered. Mobil 1 embarrassed the dino oil.