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Wal-Mart brand oil
Today I finally changed the oil in my 1998 Z3 1.9L for the first time today. I bought one of those "Oil Boys" from West Marine, talk about a simple non-messy process.
I have become completely obsessed with oil over the past few weeks. I find myself hovering about the Wal-Mart or Pep Boys oil isle 3 times a week reading the back of oil containers. Or surfing the web half the night researching synthetic oils. Amazingly, today I discovered Wal-Mart's synthetic Super Tech brand is A3/B3 certified. This seems completely bizarre to me considering not one of the synthethics on their self other than Mobil 0W-40 is A3/B3 certified.
Incidently, after researching oil for 3 @#$! weeks I decided to go with Mobil 0W-40 for my 1.9L since Amsoil, which seems to be the best from everything I've read, isn't easily available locally. Yet, for some reason I still keep dwelling on the fact I just put a 0 weight oil in my car (a first EVER for me). I've never been this anal retentive over any car I've owned in the past.
~Sail
| | Reply » Wal-Mart brand oil |
Quote: Today I finally changed the oil in my 1998 Z3 1.9L for the first time today. I bought one of those "Oil Boys" from West Marine, talk about a simple non-messy process.
I have become completely obsessed with oil over the past few weeks. I find myself hovering about the Wal-Mart or Pep Boys oil isle 3 times a week reading the back of oil containers. Or surfing the web half the night researching synthetic oils. Amazingly, today I discovered Wal-Mart's synthetic Super Tech brand is A3/B3 certified. This seems completely bizarre to me considering not one of the synthethics on their self other than Mobil 0W-40 is A3/B3 certified.
Incidently, after researching oil for 3 @#$! weeks I decided to go with Mobil 0W-40 for my 1.9L since Amsoil, which seems to be the best from everything I've read, isn't easily available locally. Yet, for some reason I still keep dwelling on the fact I just put a 0 weight oil in my car (a first EVER for me). I've never been this anal retentive over any car I've owned in the past.
~Sail | And it only gets worse 
| | Reply » Wal-Mart brand oil |
Most labels are full of half truths or truths that can be argued in court. Most top brand oils are pretty close to one another... minor differences in additive package. What you have to be careful with are the ones that claim to be synthetic but are really synthetic blends (made from conventional fossil oil base stock). It was a huge legal circus (involving Castrol) a few years back. In the end the consumers lost out. The courts ruled that if the oil is partially synthetic, the manufacturers can legally claim the product is a "synethetic"... and charge full synthetic price.
These are the ones that I know are full synthetic:
Mobil 1
AMSoil (ASE & 2000 series)
Pennzoil Platinum (the new one with rounded bottle)
| | Reply » Wal-Mart brand oil |
What about BMW oil from the dealership? I thought that was supposed to be good synthetic oil.
| | Reply » Wal-Mart brand oil |
BMW labeled oils are Castrol.
| | Reply » Wal-Mart brand oil |
Quote: Most labels are full of half truths or truths that can be argued in court. Most top brand oils are pretty close to one another... minor differences in additive package. What you have to be careful with are the ones that claim to be synthetic but are really synthetic blends (made from conventional fossil oil base stock). It was a huge legal circus (involving Castrol) a few years back. In the end the consumers lost out. The courts ruled that if the oil is partially synthetic, the manufacturers can legally claim the product is a "synethetic"... and charge full synthetic price.
These are the ones that I know are full synthetic:
Mobil 1
AMSoil (ASE & 2000 series)
Pennzoil Platinum (the new one with rounded bottle) | Synthetic blends are just that, blends of synthetic oils and non-synthetic oils. Such blends are clearly marked on the packaging.
ALL oils are made from petroleum base stock. There are two ways to make a synthetic oil from those base stocks.
1) Break the long chain hydrocarbons down to fairly small pieces (PAOs) and stick back together to make the oil you want.
2) Hydrocrack the long chaim molecules directly to the molecules you want.
BOTH method create a oil that is predominantly the most desireable oil molecules. Both create a mix that is not available in nature by synthesizing oil molecules from other molecules.
And what happens in court decisions has nothing to do with the actual chemistry.
In act, hydrocracked oil have some properties that are superior to PAO based oils. And hydrocracking has the ability to actually produce a wider range of oil molecules if desired, some of which are better lubricants than PAO based oil.
And either one is a far superior oil to conventional oils.
Interestingly though, in certain applications PAO synthetic do NOT perform well at all. Mobil 1 bought a lot of people brand new aircraft engines (which are NOT cheap) due to roblems using PAO based oil in high horsepower air cooled aircraft engines. Currently technology for aircraft engines is a blended conventional and hydrocracked synthetic.
Yes, much of the difference is in the additive package, however some of the differences are that soe companies do not bother testing certain of their products to some of the standards, so all the package tells you is that that oil was tested and passed the standard. If it isn't on the pacakge, it doesn't tell you it failed, but maybe it just wasn't submitted for that test. Such testing is NOT cheap. An 99.% of people who buy oil have no idea what to look for and do not care.
As for using a 0 weight oil, that is not really true. If you take a conventional oil it has a viscosity versus temperature curve that is fairly steep, ie as you get colder it gets much thicker, as you get warmed it gets much thinner. A multi viscosity oil says that you have managed to make that curve more shallow, so that at the cold end it isn't as thick, and at the warm end, it isn't as thin. With conventional oils they do this by using a thin base oil, then adding viscosity improvers so the oil doesn't thin out as much as it gets warm. Bad news is, those VIs do brek down leaving you with a thin oil.
Synthetics have a MUCH shallower V vs T curve, so they are naturally "multi viscosity" when compared to conventional oils. So little or no VIs used. So 0W-40 is the same thickness cold as a cold 0 weight conventional oil, but hot is the same as a hot conventional 40 weight oil. And below the low temp test point, the it stays thinner even more so, so if you tested at alower temp, you could come up with a negative weight number.  It also means that at higher temps it thins out less than even a multi viscosity conventional oil.
Add in the superior lubricating properties and synthetics are the way to go.
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Wal-Mart brand oil