AORoads

LDB to the rescue again for truth and reason in "the oil wars." Yay!

cclive

I think that oil has become so good that engine wear is really a problem that we almost never get to. Most cars are worn out and in a junkyard somewhere long before their engines actually wear out. It makes sense to use good quality oil, but once that is done, the minor differences between one brand and another are like saying that one engine will go 400,000 miles and the other will go 450,000 miles. It's not a very important comparison because the car hit the junkyard at 200,000 miles.

cclive

Update, just got my Mobil One rebate in the mail...it never showed up on their tracking website so I was skeptical, but since Walmart is usually the least expensive anyway, I thought I would give it a try...worked out even though they were not on the list of approved merchants.

AORoads

It's the American way, Chris---Happy Fourth!

BTW folks, I was just at a Costco and even during their $10 off sale on Mobil1, each store can have an instant 'more off' sale. They do it both during and not during a sale. Today, at this one store, it was an added 3 off for 5W-30 Mobil1, 6 Qts. That's 25 (vs. 27) for 6 Qts. Not bad, not bad.

wayback

Orielly auto has 5 qt Mobile one and a Mobil one oil filter for 33.43 on sale now. I usually go to ww for oil and get the filter from Orielly so this saved me a trip to WW. Limit is 2 so thats what I bought.

Changed oil and filter yesterday.

Turbo6TA

Just got my $12 rebate check in the mail from Mobil 1 a couple of days ago.

That $22.88 + tax jug of Mobil 1 that I bought from Walmart only cost me $10.88 + tax after getting the $12 rebate check !

Curtis A. Franz

I did that recently. However they are back up to $26 something for a 5 qt jug.

Huskerman

....so LDB....you seem like a wise man.....what operating temp does the Mobile 1 have to be at to fully lubricate the engine........I rarely get to 200 degrees and usually run in the 160 to 170 degree range. Some say if you are not at 220 then the oil isn't doing it's job....my GS has an oil cooler and did not come with any cover to allow the oil temps to increase.....should I be concerned?

not trying to hijack the thread but really have been wondering about this......

LDB

That’s a good question which I can’t answer with full confidence. The missing piece of info is the oil temp actually in the bearings. All we know is the temp at the single point outside the moving parts of the engine, where it is being measured. I’d be a bit nervous driving a car with uncontrolled oil cooler on the street, but Chevy builds a lot of Vettes that way and knows most of them will be driven on the street most of the time, and they don’t recommend thinner oil for those cars. So presumably, the oil temp inside the actual moving parts heats up enough so that it doesn’t give problems.

In terms of actual numbers, I normally think of an upper limit for warmed up oil viscosity to be the upper middle teens in centistokes. Viscosity of 5W30 at 160F is about 20 centistokes, and at 170F, is about 18 centistokes. So it’s not that the oil cooler engines on the street are grossly high, and perhaps they aren’t high at all when you look at the temp within the bearings where it really matters.

The high end of the temp range is where oil coolers clearly help, because you can’t argue that oil temp in the bearings is cooler than the measured temp. For guidelines there, I like to think of minimum viscosity in upper middle single digits. Viscosity of 5W30 is about 7 or 8 centistokes at 250F, which is why at the really high oil temps of racing, you go to a heavier oil and/or use a big oil cooler.

Huskerman

....good stuff LDBman......which now raises more questions.....this would be a good question for Tadge to offer an opinion about......as you said though Chevy has a lot of Corvettes out there running an oil cooler on the street so they must know its going to be ok over the long haul......or we hope they do anyway........appreciate your advice.......