Synthetic oil

If nothing else, the old commercial where they claim that 80% of your engine wear occurs during warmup is true. Those who live in the South may not notice cold weather issues as much as those in the North. I grew up in the Midwest and remember those sub-zero mornings where the engine would never really warm up completely. It's a proven fact that synthetics flow much more readily when cold than mineral oils. It may take several minutes for mineral oils to squeak through the tiny passages whereas synthetic oil will be flowing freely even when bone cold. Your oil filter bypass may be open during these cold starts as well. As others here have noted, cold engines turn over more easily with synthetic oil. You can change your mineral oil every 3000 miles and get pretty good results with it. Count me among the old and lazy. I prefer not to spend my life under my car.

Edit: Don't get me started on synthetic ATF. I've changed brownish ATF mineral oil at 30,000 miles to synthetic and ran the synthetic ATF for 90,000 miles, only to see that oil still with its nice red tint.


Edited by DougS - 21 May 2015 at 10:48am

To those who think synthetic makes no difference...why at the same interval in the same engine is synthetic oil cleaner?

I'd believe synthetic blend is a marketing ploy although I have been using it in my gas engines. But that is mostly because if you catch an oil change special at the parts store its only about $1 more than the good conventional.

I got 330000 miles out of my old truck runnin Quaker State. I'm sittin at 263??? on my present truck runnin Quaker State. My Stihl 031 got whatever 2 stroke I could find locally and was still runnin strong at 30 years old when it got stolen.