At our monthly Mustang club meeting yesterday....

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We discussed that since most oils are owned by just a few of the huge oil companies is their really a dimes bit of diff between them?
Back in the 70's each oil company produced and QC their products,,,,now RDS,Exxon,BP own the vast majority with just a few boutique oil scattered about. So is Mobile that much diff than say penn plat? etc?
 
My feeling is the basic difference is how much they hype it and how much they put on the price sticker. Very little real difference exists.
 
Seems like Dexos Gen 2 has really pushed all the oil blenders to the same basic additive pack for the popular 5W-30, and there is likely little difference in base oils. I would say that the tough industry specs are really narrowing any performance gap that may have existed between brands 15 years ago.
 
Differences are negligible in this day and age. It all comes down to personal preference. Some say Pennzoil cleans better than the rest, but I've opened many engines that were spotless inside running either conventional or synthetic at reasonable intervals so that seems a little invalid to me.

I still advise people to stay away from house brands like SuperTech and whatnot, those never really impressed me much. Unless it was a car I didn't care about, you'd never catch me pouring that in my engine. The quality control seems a bit more lax, probably has to be to keep the price low! I saw a pour cold test once and ST conventional pours like cold molasses whereas synthetics and other conventional oil brand names poured out fairly quickly.
 
Well, ST is blended by Warren Petroleum and is generally considered a good oil.

If you want to see the differences, PQIA is your friend. The blends are different. The base stocks are different. How could they be otherwise. The biggies control whole oil fields, so the feed stocks will be different - field to field.

Add packs are different as some make up most of the their own, some buy-in the add packs.

If you are only talking 5W-30 - yeah they seem to be very similar.

But as soon as you step away from that arena, it all gets very different. The differences between Chevron Supreme and Motul 300V are about grand canyon wide. Nothing wrong with either oil, but they are barely cousins ...
 
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Originally Posted By: jongies3
Differences are negligible in this day and age. It all comes down to personal preference. Some say Pennzoil cleans better than the rest, but I've opened many engines that were spotless inside running either conventional or synthetic at reasonable intervals so that seems a little invalid to me.

I still advise people to stay away from house brands like SuperTech and whatnot, those never really impressed me much. Unless it was a car I didn't care about, you'd never catch me pouring that in my engine. The quality control seems a bit more lax, probably has to be to keep the price low! I saw a pour cold test once and ST conventional pours like cold molasses whereas synthetics and other conventional oil brand names poured out fairly quickly.
i guess you didn't see my Post about our shop truck with almost 430k on it. Using mostly pep boys proline oil made by warren
 
Originally Posted By: Chris142
Unless you have a car that specs a specialy rated oil any sn rated oil will work fine.

Even then, if it's a vehicle requiring a fancy OEM approval, and there are several with that approval, it's probably splitting hairs between them, too.
 
Originally Posted By: novadude
Seems like Dexos Gen 2 has really pushed all the oil blenders to the same basic additive pack for the popular 5W-30, and there is likely little difference in base oils. I would say that the tough industry specs are really narrowing any performance gap that may have existed between brands 15 years ago.


I think you are right, but I think it works both ways. As some industry specs seem very proscriptive now days.

Certainly the lesser oils have been forced to improve their product to meet modern specs, and this is a good thing when it comes to stuff like deposit control and excessive volatility.

However you also have restrictions on allowed viscosity grades, Sulphated ash (SA%) limits and Phos limits. Try finding a 10W30 Dexos oil or a high ZDDP SN oil in 5W30. You can't do it.

The Euro ACEA specs allow a range with max and min values, so I can name two full synthetic 5W30 oils, one A5/B5 (Valvoline SynPower) and the other A3/B4 (Castrol Edge) and both are "only" SL oils. Both have ~ 1000 ppm zinc for extra wear protection and a TBN above 10 for long life. Neither can claim Dexos or SN but both meet some other great OEM specs like Ford 913D (A5/B5) and MB 229.5 + BMW LL-01 (A3/B4).
 
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