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Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
Posts: 3,308
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Hi,
Definitely Redline over Amsoil, but save a buck and use good old Mobil1.
Rich (aka BruceLee) cited a number of studies Redline/Royal Purple/Mobil1 which showed MB1 inferior because as Bruce stated, MB1 was a PAO and not Esther-based Base Stock Synthetic.
I did some research, and these comparisons pre-date the reformulation (not just repackaging) of MB1 a couple years ago, wherein now all High-Mileage Mobil1 uses Esther-based Base Stocks, but has a smaller additive package than the other two oils by half, meaning that it contains 10%-12% more Base Stock Oil by volume. This from a friend in the local Lotus Club who is a Lubrication Engineer for Exxon-Mobil (5 years). But, before anyone cries Foul - conflict of Interest, Jesse started with Texaco straight out of college and worked with motor oil, oil manufacturing, and testing, and additive technology for about 15 years or so. He spent 7 years at the Texaco lubrication and additive research and development facility in the Catskills as the Development Manager.
One interesting thing Jesse pointed out was that Redline, Royal Purple, and Shaeffers are all excellent Synthetics, but in testing, they have always exhibited a fairly wide variation when subjected to Quality tests. None of these Companies refine their own Base Stocks and in fact buy them from a number of suppliers based on availability, price, etc. such as Texaco, Exxon-Mobil, Coastal-Unilube, etc. They don't own a single refinery amongst them, and the quality of the Base Stocks they purchase can vary as a product of who is supplying their Base Stocks at any given time..
He further stated, there are 3 things that make motor oil unfit for continued use in an engine:
1) The additive package becomes depleted and can no longer offer all the performance and wear improvements necessary.
2) The oil becomes overly contaminated with particulate matter, combustion by-products, corrosive acids, dust, dirt, silica (VERY damaging!), and sludge. The sludge is a direct result of the combination of heat, air, water and petroleum - in Dino Oil, (which is chemically the reactive trace elements left in the crude after refining: Sulfur and Phosphorous are the big ones).
3) The oil becomes fuel diluted with raw gasoline. Gas does not lubricate and an oil filter does not filter-out gas. Gas goes right through undeterred. An oil filter is designed to filter out particulate matter only. Cars that are driven mainly in the city with a lot of low-speed driving, a lot of traffic lights, and do a lot of idling tend to put a lot more unburned gas into the oil. It is common for cars to burn a considerable amount of oil because it has become fuel diluted, reducing its ability to lubricate. Then, because the thinned-out oil cannot seal as well, it will let even more unburned fuel and contaminates past the rings, and more of the oil will burn away. The gas being introduced will sometimes take the 'place' of the oil, and when you look on your dipstick, you see that it is 'full'. This will lead some to believe that their car does not burn oil.
What all this adds up to is that Mobil1 is now just as good, if not better, than the other Synthetics named in the previous studies. Stick with 0W-40 unless you live in the Gobi or Antartica, or the car is going to accumulate most of it's miles on the Track.
But, Oil is like Beer, in that everyone has their favorite. Stick with any of these and you'll be OK. You can measure the differences in a Laboratory, but, practically speaking, given identical cars, drivers, usage, climate, maintenance etc., each using a different one of these Synthetics, you won't find any one car lasting appreciably longer, or costing the owner any less to maintain (except maybe for the cost of the Oil itself), than any of the others. Hope this helps...
Happy Motoring!... Jim'99
Last edited by MNBoxster; 10-25-2006 at 10:17 AM.
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