What oil and filter?

[Whitelightning]

Strewth, Im a petroleum specialist and all I put in my old supra was bog standard halfords synth. Pay the extra if you want but none of our machines are going to last 30yrs, let some other bugger pay for it. H-Cracked is nearer the orig spec than these new oils.

 

Yes yes yes, you COULD have kevlar woven underwear too coz they last longer - but you dont.

 

There are those of you who have to have the best. There nothing I can say that will convince you that the differences in some oils and fuels often amounts to nothing more than marketing. So I shall not go there

 

(Cue oil specialist with facts and figures . . . lol )

[fredm]

Interesting these arguments, here's something to think on.

In 1985 the firm I worked for bought about 75 1600 Cavaliers for run on the fleet. These vehicles were hammered from day 1 by people who had no mechanical sympathy whatsoever. And I mean hammered. In fact I remember when doing the P.D.I.'s taking several up to the redline in all gears just to see what they would do (I'm older and more sensible now...........I would at least warm the engine first!).

Anyway we had the cavaliers for 3 years and sold them with on average around 100,000 although some had 150,000 miles on the clock.

If we had turned back the clocks to 50,000 you would not have been able to tell, they ran perfect, no smoke, no rattles and I cannot remember having any mechanical problems with the engines at all.

Now I am covinced that the reason we never had a problem is because the vehicles were serviced religiously every 6000miles without fail, oil and filter every time.

Another case to ponder, we run diesel vans in the company I work for now and they get hammered on a daily basis, I know because I drive one. The vans also spend quite a lot of time idling doing nothing. Never a good thing for an engine (unless it was designed for it) it doesn't do things like cams and followers any good.

The company sells them after 3 years and they often have up to 120,000 on the clock. Again, they don't smoke,rattle etc. and I can't remember the last time we had an engine problem; clutch and g/box plenty.

Again they get serviced religiously every 10,000 miles. For the last 4 years Halford's has been doing the servicing and they use the same standard oil that they use for their customer servicing.I know because I often stand next to the guys as they sevice the van.

I agree with everything that paul mac has said and I have thought the same for the last 15 odd years. It is nice to give your engine the very best, it's just that for some cars it just isn't necessary.

My UK TT has now got 90,000 on the clock, I am the 6th owner and I have a got a service book with a dealer stamp every 9000 miles (+ or - a couple of hundred either way) and it sounds sweet as a nut doesn't smoke pulls like a train etc. etc.

Just something to think about.

[oilman]

Originally posted by paul mac

ooo you halfords snob, i'll say it for the third time, compare the standards printed on the side of the can

(if Mr Halford is reading this, can i have my free 20 litres now-please)

 

I wish I could say you were right about standards and API specs but you're not.

 

"API specifications are minimum specifications for oils. They exist for your safety so that you have reasonable assurance that an oil will "adequately" protect your engine. However, these are not, by any means, a standard by which you could determine whether an oil was good or not. As an example, you'll find that even a cheap oil which costs next to nothing will most likely carry the API SL rating. That should tell you something about how hard it is to attain that rating."

 

Believe it or not, I don't just sell expensive oil, check out my website, some of the oils on there are £2.50 per litre!

 

The point here is it's the quality of the basestocks that matter, petroleum and synthetic oils (proper ones) are chalk and cheese, proper synthetics are not even related to petroleum oils, they are made in laboratories by chemists, not dug out of the ground!

 

Cheers

Simon