Blackstone determines the best oil brand

[VR4EVER]

Originally Posted by jvincent

I was thinking in the context of taking the car to the track. I usually change my oil pretty frequently during track season, but I was curious how the different brands maintained their viscosity with age.

Along the same lines as what you said, how the viscosity changes with heat varies widely with brands of oil. This directly correlates to engine wear, and oil will break down after X amount of hard heat cycles (along with bearing tolerances playing into the shear among many other factors). In one of my labs in college I tested various brands on a viscometer including VR-1, Penzoil, Mobil 1, Castrol, and others. Castrol really stood out compared to the others for not breaking down under high temperatures (300F)

But the additives within oils do a lot of the work, and to Blackstone's point, it's 6 of one, half dozen of the other. Don't buy the worst oil, but don't break the bank with $100 oil changes either is what I took away from it.

And as someone said... it's not a 25% increase... :facepalm:

[viscositosis.rex]

Do not make the mistake of overemphasizing tens of parts of million of iron in your used oil analysis.

Do not make the mistake of ignoring the "scavenger" factor in ester based motor oils.

It is folly for anyone to suggest that Royal Purple, Red Line, Motul, and high ester Mobil 1 formulas are not fine motor oils.

Until you get into over ~150 parts per million of iron in your used oil analysis, it is insignificant.

Doug Hillary has spoken.