anyone else's car tell them when to change the oil/any supertech 1030syn testers?

[ryan roopnarine]

yet? as you could probably deduce from the length of my title, i've a rather long, rambling post to make, mostly because i'm pissed off that my car can't make 35 mpg right now, and its not because something's broken.....

about the car telling me to change its oil....
over the last three oil change cycles or so, i've noticed that my car has a tendency of "telling" me when its oil needs to be changed. how does it do this, you may ask? with valvoline maxlife 10w30, mobil 1 5w30 and maxlife 10w40, i've noticed that, at a certain mileage, the gas mileage in my car will either noticably increase or decrease, depending on the oil in the crankcase as a result of the oil going out of grade. with both the maxlifes, after about 3500 miles, the gas mileage went down about 1-1.5 mpg (both were scoring about 30-30.5 at 70 mph prior to degradation). i left the maxlife 10-30 in to 4500 miles, because i wasn't as conscienscious about oil quality and change interval back then, and because i figured that asl long as i kept things below 5k miles (with mostly highway use), i'd be ok. this reveals something interesting about the 10w30 to me, as it got the same mileage as the out of grade 10w40, which means that it either sheared to a very high viscosity 40 weight oil, or a low weight 50 oil when its useful life was up. the m1 5w30, which has a kinematic viscosity of 9.3 cst (which means that its a VERY thin 30 weight), went UP about 1 mpg when it sheared out at 6500 miles (to about 32 mpg at 70), which is the logical result of the oil starting off life as a low 30 (shear to 20). with my new revelation in mind, i thought i'd do a little experiment. i was planning on putting in german castrol 0w30 (jesus among <$6 motor oils) at my last oil change (Mid weight 30 weight WRT viscosity at 100 C) or mobil 1 0w40 which is a very heavy weight 40, shown by this collection of new oil analyses at bobistheoilguy.com
http://theoildrop.server101.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=11;t=000095#000000

i decided that i woud eschew the synthetic for this change in order to complete said experiment. having seen that new oil analyses (as far as viscosity is concerned) for the walmart supertech conventional correlate strongly to the supertech synthetics

here's a chart of the supertech conventionalsfrom here
http://theoildrop.server101.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=11;t=000036#000002


SJ SuperTech sheets...

Super Tech SAE Grade(SJ) 5W30 10W30 10W40 20W50
API Gravity 30.7 30.3 31.3 27.9
Viscosity cSt 40C 67.0 73.2 104.0 170.5
Viscosity cSt 100C 10.7 11.0 15.2 19.4
Visc@100F SUS 342.0 376.0 532.0 887.0
Visc@210F SUS 62.8 63.9 80.3 98.3
Visc. Index 155.0 140.0 152.0 121.0
Flash Point c (F) 207(405) 210(410) 221(430) 227(441)
Fire Point C(F) 221(430) 227(441) 232(450) 235(455)
Pour Point C(F) "-37(-35) "-34(-29) "-34(-30) "29(-20)
Viscosity cP, Max 3500@
"-cp Max, 4500 "-25(-13) "-20(4) "-20(-4) "-10(14)
Low Temp Pumping C(F) "-30(-22) "-25(-13) "-25(-13) "-15(-5)
Viscosity cP Max 30,000.0 30,000.0 30,000.0 30,000.0


and the viscos of a 5w30 supertech from here
http://theoildrop.server101.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=11;t=000209#000000


which shows a kinematic viscosity of about 10.1 for it (mid 30wt)

shows a trifiling difference between the two, indicating a high likelihood that the supertech base stock is used to make the supertech synthetic, they are made at the same facility, after all. (for those of you that don't know, supertech synthetic is not a "true" synthetic like mobil 1 is, its like the non-german castrol syntec varieties.)

what exactly does this mean I did at my last oil change? this means that i put in supertech conventional 10w40 in to establish one interval's worth of controls for walmart house oils before trying the supertech 10-30 synthetic.
seeing as my car somewhat reliably tells me when it would like its oil changed, i can use this to determine when the supertech synthetic will go out of grade, and thussly, when it craps out (and how much of a "bargain" it is). unfortunately, its way too hot here in florida to run 10w30 until winter, but at an average of 2000 miles/month on my car, i don't think it will take long before i can try the stuff out. i was really hoping that somebody tried the stuff out here, and could say something to its efficacy.

alright, ramble over.

what, you might ask, does all of this have to do with me not being able to get 35 mpg at 55 anymore? well, if you look at the chart i provided above, you will ses that the supertech conventional 10w40is very very close to being a 50 in weight, way moreso than the maxlife w40 is. i'm currently only getting about 33.5 at 55 mph and 30.5 at 70 with this oil in the crankcase.

any comments/anybody care to set anything obviously inaccurate in the aforementioned straight?

[rickm]

Ryan, dude...you need a girlfriend. :D

[ryan roopnarine]

just to clarify for the people not in the US. walmart supertech synthetic is available for about 12 USD for 5 quarts, whereas mobil one is available cheapest at about 19 or 20 per 5 quarts from walmart. i just want to see if the stuff is worth a crap.

[ryan roopnarine]

Ryan, dude...you need a girlfriend. :D


i drive the e34 about 2500-3000 miles a month ont he highway....i have time to think about these things then. :D i'm too frigging cheap to stomach putting 30 dollars worth of motor oil in every two months, or getting filthy and nasty and having to spend 12 a month to change conventional oil. it was a charming and quaint manly testosterone type chore at one point, now, i've grown sick of changing oil in this thing.

[rickm]

Jeez....what do you do to drive that much?

[ryan roopnarine]

one example month: may

3100 miles to ontario and back (won't count this)

2 trips from my apartment to tallahassee florida (back when all of the viruses broke out) to fix my sis's computer and take it to compusa to use the extended warranty) ---340 miles rt

two trips home to help my mother do sundry tasks that would cost her more than the $12 in gas it would take me to get home--2*230=460

one impromptu trip to miami when i got home, 500 mi RT...

plus a bunch of other crap that seems to happen with regularity, every month, NOT including my daily life driving (which is like 360 miles a month), far less than most other people have to drive.

[ScottyWM]

You got internet in your car??

[ryan roopnarine]

lets just say this.....in january, i took 18 of these stickers from discount auto parts (cute, arent they?). even though i may change other ppl's oil as well, i only have 8 of them remaining, and most were used on my car

[hdaemon]

Jeez....what do you do to drive that much?

When i was back in college, I drove an average of about 35k per year. While some of it was on trips to and from my parents place (250 miles each way), the vast majority of it was commuting to internships during the summer. Ranging between 60-70 miles away (depending on which summer you're talking about), the miles add up fast. Granted, the only reason I did it was because I didn't want to have to pay for both my apartment at school and another one closer to work. Never did understand why people are willing to put up with multi-hour commutes and living such long distances from work. And I doubly question that every time I get on the Mass Pike westbound at rush hour. Taking 2 hours to go 30 miles on a highway is just insane/

[Dave M]

University internships: a great way to rack em up. For a few years I travelled from the University of New Brunswick to Northern Alberta and beyond to work (@ 5500km each way). The trips were made in my 10 year old, stereo-less 85 VW scirroco (one year with only four gears at 90km/h).
What a great car. It saw most of North America, never burned oil and only lost one wheel at highway speed (read lucky). The speedo cable broke at 250,000km and I drove it for another 6 years until I got the e34.
Hmmm, maybe I should restore it.

Fun to reminisce

[DanDombrowski]

I think variations in temperature will cause just as much of a change in gas milage as you're talking about, as well as other variables such as the amount of crap in the car, etc.

Now, tell me you wouldn't be happier if you had spent the same amount of time that it took you to research this washing and waxing it.




yet? as you could probably deduce from the length of my title, i've a rather long, rambling post to make, mostly because i'm pissed off that my car can't make 35 mpg right now, and its not because something's broken.....

about the car telling me to change its oil....
over the last three oil change cycles or so, i've noticed that my car has a tendency of "telling" me when its oil needs to be changed. how does it do this, you may ask? with valvoline maxlife 10w30, mobil 1 5w30 and maxlife 10w40, i've noticed that, at a certain mileage, the gas mileage in my car will either noticably increase or decrease, depending on the oil in the crankcase as a result of the oil going out of grade. with both the maxlifes, after about 3500 miles, the gas mileage went down about 1-1.5 mpg (both were scoring about 30-30.5 at 70 mph prior to degradation). i left the maxlife 10-30 in to 4500 miles, because i wasn't as conscienscious about oil quality and change interval back then, and because i figured that asl long as i kept things below 5k miles (with mostly highway use), i'd be ok. this reveals something interesting about the 10w30 to me, as it got the same mileage as the out of grade 10w40, which means that it either sheared to a very high viscosity 40 weight oil, or a low weight 50 oil when its useful life was up. the m1 5w30, which has a kinematic viscosity of 9.3 cst (which means that its a VERY thin 30 weight), went UP about 1 mpg when it sheared out at 6500 miles (to about 32 mpg at 70), which is the logical result of the oil starting off life as a low 30 (shear to 20). with my new revelation in mind, i thought i'd do a little experiment. i was planning on putting in german castrol 0w30 (jesus among <$6 motor oils) at my last oil change (Mid weight 30 weight WRT viscosity at 100 C) or mobil 1 0w40 which is a very heavy weight 40, shown by this collection of new oil analyses at bobistheoilguy.com
http://theoildrop.server101.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=11;t=000095#000000

i decided that i woud eschew the synthetic for this change in order to complete said experiment. having seen that new oil analyses (as far as viscosity is concerned) for the walmart supertech conventional correlate strongly to the supertech synthetics

here's a chart of the supertech conventionalsfrom here
http://theoildrop.server101.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=11;t=000036#000002


SJ SuperTech sheets...

Super Tech SAE Grade(SJ) 5W30 10W30 10W40 20W50
API Gravity 30.7 30.3 31.3 27.9
Viscosity cSt 40C 67.0 73.2 104.0 170.5
Viscosity cSt 100C 10.7 11.0 15.2 19.4
Visc@100F SUS 342.0 376.0 532.0 887.0
Visc@210F SUS 62.8 63.9 80.3 98.3
Visc. Index 155.0 140.0 152.0 121.0
Flash Point c (F) 207(405) 210(410) 221(430) 227(441)
Fire Point C(F) 221(430) 227(441) 232(450) 235(455)
Pour Point C(F) "-37(-35) "-34(-29) "-34(-30) "29(-20)
Viscosity cP, Max 3500@
"-cp Max, 4500 "-25(-13) "-20(4) "-20(-4) "-10(14)
Low Temp Pumping C(F) "-30(-22) "-25(-13) "-25(-13) "-15(-5)
Viscosity cP Max 30,000.0 30,000.0 30,000.0 30,000.0


and the viscos of a 5w30 supertech from here
http://theoildrop.server101.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=11;t=000209#000000


which shows a kinematic viscosity of about 10.1 for it (mid 30wt)

shows a trifiling difference between the two, indicating a high likelihood that the supertech base stock is used to make the supertech synthetic, they are made at the same facility, after all. (for those of you that don't know, supertech synthetic is not a "true" synthetic like mobil 1 is, its like the non-german castrol syntec varieties.)

what exactly does this mean I did at my last oil change? this means that i put in supertech conventional 10w40 in to establish one interval's worth of controls for walmart house oils before trying the supertech 10-30 synthetic.
seeing as my car somewhat reliably tells me when it would like its oil changed, i can use this to determine when the supertech synthetic will go out of grade, and thussly, when it craps out (and how much of a "bargain" it is). unfortunately, its way too hot here in florida to run 10w30 until winter, but at an average of 2000 miles/month on my car, i don't think it will take long before i can try the stuff out. i was really hoping that somebody tried the stuff out here, and could say something to its efficacy.

alright, ramble over.

what, you might ask, does all of this have to do with me not being able to get 35 mpg at 55 anymore? well, if you look at the chart i provided above, you will ses that the supertech conventional 10w40is very very close to being a 50 in weight, way moreso than the maxlife w40 is. i'm currently only getting about 33.5 at 55 mph and 30.5 at 70 with this oil in the crankcase.

any comments/anybody care to set anything obviously inaccurate in the aforementioned straight?

[ryan roopnarine]

when i measure fuel economy, i always take in to consideration the weight of the car at the time, amount of fuel in tank, ambient temperature....all runs were conducted at between 75 and 80 F, and 1/4-1/2 tank. the car was at least 35 lbs lighter than usual when i took the last mpg run (when i was trying to get a 35 mpg reading), that's how i know that this oil is sucking my mileage down.


I think variations in temperature will cause just as much of a change in gas milage as you're talking about, as well as other variables such as the amount of crap in the car, etc.

Now, tell me you wouldn't be happier if you had spent the same amount of time that it took you to research this washing and waxing it.

[DanDombrowski]

Sorry Doctor, I didn't mean to interrupt your research.

I wonder if you can buy in any more "bulk" than the 5 gal buckets at the auto parts store. Perhaps a 15 gallon drum of oil might be more economical? That or you could just purchase around 25% of the Exxon Mobil company, they'd probably give you a discount then.

[Brian C.]

:d

[MBXB]

Ryan,
I used their synthetic for one cycle early this year, just to see how my car would run. It didn't like it at all. My engine mileage went down, engine sounded noisy and ran rougher. I switched to Mobil 1 0/40 and all is well.

[Tiger]

How do you calculate MPG? Do you calculate mileage against how much fuel you put in? I find it too hard to believe your fuel mileage... OBD can be off if not calibrated... heck... I can make your OBD to read 50MPG.

[ryan roopnarine]

my fuel mileage is determined by OBC, then a scotchtape mark on the gas gauge from where the fill up stopped. after doing this for about 4 times, i've found that my obc is actually 1 off, as in if it reads 33.5 mpg, it means 34.5 mpg. i still do it if i remember a piece of tape to make sure everything is still working right on the car. the only problem i've found with relying on my obc for longer than 500 mile continuous trips is that it shows WAAAYYYY low after a while. i drove 1450 miles to ontario in 19 hours, and the obc only showed about 22.5 mpg. after i added up gas receipts, keeping in mind the amount still remaining in the car, and found that i had gotten about 31.5 mpg up, and 28.6 on the return trip ( i think it was because i put in one tank of 87 on return). i don't bs on the gas mileage becasue my goal is to get the car to do about 36 mpg, so that my trips to orlando use less than 8 gallons in gas Roundtrip. right now, its about 8 point something small at approximately 17-18 dollars if i fill up at the citgo down the street that price matches 89 and 93 octane on saturday and friday.....i thought something was up initially, too, as this car has a 4.10 rear end. i found that a can of bg44k really helped my car (between .5 and 2 mpg since, depending on driving conditions), which it might not do for others.


How do you calculate MPG? Do you calculate mileage against how much fuel you put in? I find it too hard to believe your fuel mileage... OBD can be off if not calibrated... heck... I can make your OBD to read 50MPG.

[ryan roopnarine]

ammendment to below post.....was talking to someone here about something that costs 12 dollars, and that's why i typed 12 and 13 something something before, meant to type gallonage specifics.

ramon----what time of year did you try the walmart synthetic? your climate can't be that much different than mine.....and i realised why i thought balls was closed, i confused it with the damn purple porpoise. :D

[DanDombrowski]

Ya know, going downhill and all?


my fuel mileage is determined by OBC, then a scotchtape mark on the gas gauge from where the fill up stopped. after doing this for about 4 times, i've found that my obc is actually 1 off, as in if it reads 33.5 mpg, it means 34.5 mpg. i still do it if i remember a piece of tape to make sure everything is still working right on the car. the only problem i've found with relying on my obc for longer than 500 mile continuous trips is that it shows WAAAYYYY low after a while. i drove 1450 miles to ontario in 19 hours, and the obc only showed about 22.5 mpg. after i added up gas receipts, keeping in mind the amount still remaining in the car, and found that i had gotten about 31.5 mpg up, and 28.6 on the return trip ( i think it was because i put in one tank of 87 on return). i don't bs on the gas mileage becasue my goal is to get the car to do about 36 mpg, so that my trips to orlando use less than 8 gallons in gas Roundtrip. right now, its about 8 point something small at approximately 17-18 dollars if i fill up at the citgo down the street that price matches 89 and 93 octane on saturday and friday.....i thought something was up initially, too, as this car has a 4.10 rear end. i found that a can of bg44k really helped my car (between .5 and 2 mpg since, depending on driving conditions), which it might not do for others.

[ryan roopnarine]

in this particular case, i couldn't have bested the trip there because I drove most of that leg.....my chief objective in driving on the way there was to clear atlanta before 6 am on monday morning.....started driving at 7 pm on sunday night, cruise control set at 86 mph....passed atlanta at about 5 am, so i felt that i could take a nap once we cleared GA. arrived in toronto at 430 pm. i told my sister SPECIFICALLY "whatever you do, get through atlanta before 1 pm or after 6 pm....wake up to find the car moving a leisurely 15 mph at 3 pm in atlanta rush hour traffic, with the ac on, as is the custom. that might have something to do with the disparate numbers.

[MBXB]

Ryan,
I tried it from March thru May of this year. I didnt care for the added engine noise and roughER idle.

Ballz never closes. That dump is a gold mine. My son "manages" it.
I think they make a profit if they sell 2 pitchers a day. LOL

Ramon



ramon----what time of year did you try the walmart synthetic? your climate can't be that much different than mine.....and i realised why i thought balls was closed, i confused it with the damn purple porpoise. :D