What Year Did you Start Using Synthetic Motor Oil?

If you take a regular add pack like you miht have seen in the last ten years (say it was coomon during the SL, SM era) and you add that add pack at the stndard treat rate, to a gallon of gp.1 or 2 basestock, is the resulting fluid sufficiently different from te starting base to be called a 'synthetic'? If it doesnt appear that way in nature its syn, right?
So we have all been using syn for all of our lives because whatever gets drilled out of the ground is filtered, de-waxd, additivised and then put on sale.

Or do you mean specifically grp4 and grp5? Unclearly defined question is unclearly defined.
 
Originally Posted by 4WD
Probably 30-something years and still not doing past 8k … so this cyber trophy clearly goes to Tig



A can like that would look great in my garage - work shop!!
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My first use of synthetic is in a 86 Chrysler New Yorker turbo back in 2012. I use Mobil 1 5w 30 full synthetic as its turbo gets very hot. I have several cars with some use synthetic While others are still using conventional.
 
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Originally Posted by PeterPolyol
Can't remember the exact year but it was before the Castrol/Mobil court thing. The oil was Syntec 5w50 and I'll never forget the way it smelled.


The smell is the thing I remember most about Syntec 5w50. To me, it smelled like house paint. I put it in my Corvette for track use I think in 1993, and ran it hard for a season, something like 20 track days. Then over the winter, I dropped the oil pan to do a bearing check, and saw that the piston undercrowns were developing varnish deposits. Next year, I went back to Castrol GTX 5w30.
 
My first use of synthetic was in 1987 for my 1985 Pontiac Sunbird turbo. M1 5w30. I had been running Valvoline Turbo-V 10w30 from the time the car was new, then as soon as the Sunbird went out of warranty, I went to M1. Initially at 3000 mile change intervals, but after I saw the oil wasn't even changing colors, I began extending and ended up doing 6000 mile intervals until I traded it on a Camaro Z28 in 1999.
 
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The old M1 turned shiny silver metal light brown. Looked like varnish to me. I contacted Mobil and they said it wasn't varnish, just a discoloration and harmless.
 
1986 in a 1986 Mitsubishi Mirage Turbo. Mobil 1, for all 105hp out of a 1.5L. We've come a long way, haven't we?
 
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Tacoma: switched to synthetic in 2015 after 120,000 miles of conventional. Wish I'd switched much sooner but it runs awesome anyway.
Corvette: always ran synthetic.
 
Whenever I got a vehicle worth running synthetic oil.
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My first few cars were either oil burners or had leaks (looking at my ZJ, that would eternally leak from the oil filter adapter). Keeping a few quarts of PYB in my vehicles became SOP for me.
 
Around 1995 IIRC, bought the Motomaster brand (gold bottle, believe it was made by Imperial Oil at the time) synthetic oil to put in the 1974 Cutlass Supreme my grandmother gave me. Shortly after I started using M1 5w-30 in the hi-po 312 in our 1931 Chris-Craft. My dad started using it in his Lincoln at that juncture as well.
 
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