Re: Engine Oil
 

For the oils without detergents, how often are you supposed to change them?

Re: Engine Oil
 

I always wondered how long everyone here goes on their oil changes.

Now I know, and I must say, my car is babied by comparison to some of your guys' cars.

I change my IS300 every 4-5k with Valvoline SynPower and a Mobil 1 filter.

and my old GSX was changed every.... I dunno, 2 months of so since I was always tearing it back apart. The lowest that would get changed with was Valvoline Durablend. Eventually changed it to Mobil 1 5-40/0-40. Totally got rid of my lifter tick. Best thing I ever did to that engine.

I stopped using any form of conventional back in my GSX days. I don't believe in conventional anymore. The science is there. Synthetics for life. But I don't believe in running synthetics past 5k. Mostly due to my mistrust for filters. I've seen too many of the new internal filters come through my shop that have failed and were letting dirty oil flow through without filtration.

Also, I seen something around here about color. Black... like pure black... is not good. Your filter should keep it from being pure black. Dark yes, Black, no. If your oil is pure freaking black change it or change your filter.

I know, I know. Modern detergent oils turn dark because they are carrying the sludge and debris from operation.... But it still shouldn't be BLACK black. Chances are your filter failed awhile back at that point.

Re: Engine Oil
 

3k miles. Thats were the old wives tale came from was those oils.

Re: Engine Oil
 

Ahh okay Thanks. Is there really any advantage to using non-detergent oil? it seems like the stuff with it is healthier for the engine, and lasts longer. :rock2:

Re: Engine Oil
 

Castrol syntec, and audi recommends 10k oil change intervals. I got usually about 6 since the cars modified.

Non Synthetic oil, id go 4k easy.

Re: Engine Oil
 

Hmm..read this whole thread and it seems people are using Amsoil and M1 either the 10w30 or the 10w40. Good read by the way. I have a few questions though;

(1) Does it matter which oil (amsoil, m1, pennzoil, valvoline...all synthetic of coarse) I use for the mods I have and will it effect performance?
(2) I was told not to really change from (x brand) to (x brand) because of the different "ingrediants" they use for each oil...is this true? Is that why when a few of us change to different oils, there's suddenly an issue?

In my personal experience, I've been using M1 10w30 since I got the car. I've literally changed the oil RIGHT under the 3000 mile mark every time with the NAPA gold oil filters. My head currently has a leaky valve, so I'm guessing that is why the car loves to eat 1-1.5 quarts every 1500 miles. Haven't had any issues with the engine though. Head still looks pretty spotless. I will post pictures of the head soon once I get to work.

Re: Engine Oil
 

No idea what your mods are so can't answer that.



No idea what sudden issues you are referring to as I've never experienced these sudden issues you speak of, and i use different oil brands regularly (I buy what ever is on sale). So again can't answer that.

Re: Engine Oil
 

lol..early morning ftl.

as for my mods; e316g, 550s, 190 pump, 2g mani, fmic, 3" exhaust system, ported o2/2g mani, dsmlink v2(untuned still! :( ). The car has been doing fine for the past 3 years so I'm pretty satisfied with m1 10w30. Haven't driven the car since winter came though.

As for the issues for your main car and not a DD, I was reading other posts on here saying that when they switched oils, one of the members here got a spun bearing, Goodhart mentioned one of the Supra guys (mk3) getting the same thing. I haven't gotten any issues because I haven't switched brands of oil just because of the different "ingrediants" x-brand has compared to the other x-brand. As for the DD, I too buy what ever is on sale :D

Re: Engine Oil
 

1. No. In the real world any major brand synthetic (or conventional) oil is going to perform perfectly fine within reasonable oil change intervals. I use Mobil 1 because it's factory-fill on Evos and cheap at Walmart.
2. Personal preference; I believe in picking something and sticking with it, but Brandon is the exact opposite.

Re: Engine Oil
 

Fixed that for ya :)

Re: Engine Oil
 

Ive heard Shane say numerous times that Mobile one is too thin and ruins bearings. For normal cars that are more reserved im sure its fine, but highly modified cars have issues?

Re: Engine Oil
 

I don't know that it's too thin so much as people making north of 400whp are not using thicker oil. More power requires more protection any way you look at it.

Re: Engine Oil
 

I don't buy his thinking on that. Plenty of high-power track Subarus down here run Mobil 1 5W-30. Subarus do have oil over-heating issues though which is going to be magnified while sitting stationary on the dyno; that will wreck a bearing real quick under high-load no matter what brand of oil you're running.

Re: Engine Oil
 

I've seen a lot of subaru's with spun bearings on Shane's dyno that have used mobil 1.

I've always used Mobil 1 10w30 in my dsm, however I think I'm going to change to something new this year. If I blow up, I'll let you guys know. haha

Re: Engine Oil
 

There is a reason they switched to detergent oils. That reason is because non-detergent oils don't clean the sludge out of your engine. Sludge = bad, we all know this. For a modern engine I would recommend sticking with detergent oils.

This doesn't really matter. Additives are all relatively the same. Obviously some are higher quality, or are a lot more robust then others. But additives are only making up 20% of your oils composition. It's the other 80% you need to worry about, such as paraffin levels, quality of the refining, etc. Penzoil for instance is IMO the worst oil out there, especially at the conventional level. Their paraffin content is too high and leads to massive sludge.

I'm in agreeance with matt on this one peter. I'd say its more the fault of not going thick enough, like uping to a 5w40 or 10w40. Altho FP did show that just by switching to Mobil 1 they managed to scorch a thrust bearing.

Re: Engine Oil
 

Im just stating what Ive heard, and wanted Shane to chime in with his thoughts. I would agree oil weight def matters.

Ill stick with castrol though, to each their own.

Re: Engine Oil
 

Shane isn't the first person to say that either. I've heard that same comment quite a bit, and with all the failures I've seen with people running it, I will personally never run it. But to each their own :)

Re: Engine Oil
 

Odd how it's only FP turbos failing while all the OEM bearing turbos are holding up just fine without fancy oil feed lines and expensive oils ;)

If you compare the wear protection specs of Mobil 1 5W-30 vs. Amsoil's you'll notice they are almost identical. The reason you see more Mobil 1 engines blowing up is because more people run it, simple statistics.

Re: Engine Oil
 

If we are comparing wear protection then Mobil 1 loses hard. Castrol Syntec has 8 times advertised wear protection, while my boys at Valvoline market 4 times the protection (supposedly upwards of 8, but they chose the lowest denominator for marketing purposes, dont wanna get sued now)

Back in the day M1 was pretty much king shit, now-a-days there are far better alternatives. M1 just has the name going for them. Makes the dumb majority of car buyers feel special.

Re: Engine Oil
 

LOL @ everyone claiming they have billion times more wear protection. Marketing hype at it's finest. The 3/4 ball wear tests mean nothing, it's a test that was designed for testing gear oil, not engine oil.

(sorry in advance for the goofy formatting, I bolded M1 numbers to make it a bit easier to read)

Mobil 1 10W-30 Amsoil XL 10W-30
Viscosity @ 100ºC: 10.7 10.5
Viscosity, @ 40ºC: 65.3 63.6
Viscosity Index: 154 155
HTHS Viscosity: 3.26 3.2
Pour Point, ºC: -39 -40
Flash Point, ºC: 230 232

When you compare these actual technical specs (i.e. not laboratory tests paid for by Amsoil) you can see how nearly identical these oils are.