Oil v.s. oil

[itbrokeagain]

Are all brands of oil the same? Cheap vs. expensive is there really a difference?
Synthetic vs. conventional- does it really make a difference?

Also a FYI, it is normal for an engine to use 1 quart of oil per every 1200-1300 miles.

[4RunnerAdam]

Your going to get different opinions.

Here's mine.

Use the cheapest you can find. That's what I've done on every vehicle I've owned. I sold my 93 Accord a few years back with 320k on the clock. It was fed cheap oil all its life. My brother has a 96 Accord, 260k. Cheap oil for it too. I've had plenty of 180k mile cars that ran on cheap oil. No problems.


I think 1qt per 1200 miles is excessive. What car/engine?

[sarge]

back several years ago before my dad retired from GM where he was a senior engineering Exec. they had the same question . So they took all major brands of motor oil ( over the counter stuff and no synthetic ) from cheapest to the most expensive and ran bearing tests with the different types of oil . they used main bearings for the test.

and the winner was .....









Castrol GTX , it was one of the cheapest oils used in the test and it way out performed all the others.

It is all I use in my vehicles and have never had a oil based failure.

[carwash]

i believe that most oils can be considered the same for our intensive purposes.

i will be running amsoil in the new rig... and while running it with propane, i should hardly ever have to change it...

[94Dodge Truggy]

I put mobil in very expensive machinery and have had good luck with it in my vehicles. Golden spectro in my biked for air cooled motors

[MrShoeBoy]

All depends on the motor and application. Most motors could care less what oil is in them. Once you get into the performance end of things, the type of oil will get important. Big flat tappet cams with stiff valve springs need a good high quality oil with lots of zincphosphate (or something close to that) in order to survive. Most of the oils today have that additive removed in order to meet the more strict emissions requirements. Theres been a few articles on it available online. I run Amerilube in my 4.6L stroker motor with a big cam from Hesco. They recomend this oil with their cam and valvetrain so thats what I run.

AARON