Virtually all of my oil and filter knowledge has come from here. TL;DR:
It has taught me to be flexible regarding oil weight/grade, longer OCIs are okay, and usually synthetics FTW.
Before BITOG, all I knew was what commercials & marketing told me, just like a Budweiser drinker
. Sadly I don't remember what brought me here. I could go on for days, but BITOG has taught me:
*How an oil filter really works and which ones are quality
*What OCOD stands for
*The W stands for Winter
*The first number before the W (at specified temp) is actually 'thicker' than the second
*98% of professional mechanics know exactly 0% about oil
*These same mechanics are usually the morons preaching about Lucas OS and 3K OCI intervals (no offense to mechanics, I just have a few in my extended family that do exactly this...)
*PEA is your friend
*That's not a pokeball on the back of the bottle
*A tribologist doesn't analyze tribes
*How to read/understand VOAs/UOAs
*How to care for a transmission
*Conventional oils are actually pretty good
*The $1/quart rule is king. If it's found, it is stashed. No exceptions.
*To stop throwing away money with 3K OCIs - sadly, I used to do this with synthetics!
The [high mileage - all 180k+] family fleet I service gets VML every ~5k
The SS (due to the tune and driving habits) gets VSP every 4K
The Elantra gets ($2/quart) M1AP every 7,500 - staying conservative and literally going by the book