01-02-2012, 10:11 PM
I was being facetious with the "Walmart Special" comment. Yes, definitely stick with the top brands.
It's difficult to even come up with someone to trust for advice on oil selection. Mechanics have some insight, of course, but their job is to fix broken engines, not to run studies on this oil vs. that one to, uh, reduce their business. I still think one of the best resources is someone who does oil analysis for a living, such as Terry Dyson or the people at Blackstone, as they have a huge database of results with every conceivable brand of oil. But even their data was collected under anything but controlled conditions. Maybe race teams that have been around for a long time could be helpun under won't necessarily translate well to what most of us see in our cars. Plus, they may be less than thrilled about sharing their hard-won knowledge.
I seem to remember a long-term study done on New York City taxi cabs, I think by Consumer Reports, and if I'm not mistaken, their conclusion was that oil brand made virtually zero difference in terms of engine longevity, as long as it was changed at some reasonable interval, but I don't remember any details of how this study was conducted
No easy answers here for sure.
It's difficult to even come up with someone to trust for advice on oil selection. Mechanics have some insight, of course, but their job is to fix broken engines, not to run studies on this oil vs. that one to, uh, reduce their business. I still think one of the best resources is someone who does oil analysis for a living, such as Terry Dyson or the people at Blackstone, as they have a huge database of results with every conceivable brand of oil. But even their data was collected under anything but controlled conditions. Maybe race teams that have been around for a long time could be helpun under won't necessarily translate well to what most of us see in our cars. Plus, they may be less than thrilled about sharing their hard-won knowledge.
I seem to remember a long-term study done on New York City taxi cabs, I think by Consumer Reports, and if I'm not mistaken, their conclusion was that oil brand made virtually zero difference in terms of engine longevity, as long as it was changed at some reasonable interval, but I don't remember any details of how this study was conducted
No easy answers here for sure.