Originally Posted By: spasm3
That mix is fine , i would not mix four or six different quarts by four or six different brands. That would not be much of any ad pack. But one quart or even two would not be a problem.
Any mix is fine as long as they're within the range of your owners manual. Even if it isn't! I have mixed 5 different quarts all being 5 different brands/wgts. Of course that was a long time ago. I have been mixing oils for nearly 40 years. So long in fact that I can't even remember anymore.
Don't get me wrong, I have also used one brand/weight(at a time) for years also, as I was buying oil on sale by the case.
I still mix today, just to a lesser extent. Mainly using 2qts syn and 3qts dino.
I don't go out to buy oil and select 5 different oils just for an OCI! I started doing this years ago when I didn't have any money and I was getting the oil for little money or free.
Today I mix because I actually have a stash due to BITOG
and I often have some orphans. But, I try to stay with the same brand/wgt of syn and the same brand/wgt with the dino. For example:
2qts PP, M1, QSTP/HP or some other syn along with 3qts VWB or PYB or GTX or Hav or whatever. And every once in a while I'll just happen to have a mix of 3 different brands/wgts due to orphans.
And yes, I still use 5qts of the same oil when I can. But with 50-80 qts stash, it's almost impossible to do this all of the time because I often buy "orphan qts" from discount shelves at AAP, PB's, W*M along with regular oil sales/rebates.
I also want people to know that...I don't think that mixing oil brand/wgt's is optimal, I just don't think that it hurts anything. And I have put several hundred thousand miles(200K-350K) on single unrebuilt engines doing so without issue. The rest of the vehicle fell apart before the drivetrain gave out! And the engines ran great! I'm not trying to get 1,000,000 miles on an engine, I just want it to last for as long as I am going to own that vehicle without a major internal repair.
And, I don't loose sleep just because I mixed too many different oils.