Blackstone Labs Oil Report

[Southern Boy]

"Does it matter what oil you use" ?
Blackstone labs has an interesting article on this hotly debated subject.

 

[Mark_888]

"Does it matter what oil you use" ?
Blackstone labs has an interesting article on this hotly debated subject.

That is an interesting article, but there is actually a lot more to it than Blackstone let on:

1. An oil lab report should primarily be used to determine the oil change interval, not to determine how good it is at reducing engine wear. Such reports are frequently used by fleets to determine when an oil change needs to be performed on average (typically when the additives are depleted) by sampling a small number of vehicles in a fleet. It is not cost-effective to test each vehicle because the cost of the test is about the same as the cost of new oil, and that does not include the time and effort of taking the sample to send out for analysis. An oil lab report "may" be able to reveal which oils last longer than others before needing to be changed, but probably not how good it is in any other respect.
2. An oil lab test cannot accurately determine which oils results in less engine wear (except in extreme cases). Only an engine tear down can do that. Some oil are better at holding containments in suspension than others, so they may "appear" to cause more wear by having higher parts per million counts of metals, etc, but in fact some oils just hold the particles in the oil better than others. Also, some of the reported items in the oil are actually ingredients put in the oil by the manufacturer.
3. I agree that one full synthetic oil brand is about as good as another, which is why I typically use Mobil 1 from Walmart. In the Walmart 5-quart jugs, you cannot get much cheaper than that (about $25 per 5-quart jug last time I looked). If I had to go to an auto-parts store and pay $8 a quart for Mobil 1, there is no way I would use it.