"I have been manufacturing synthetic motor oil for year and have a PHD in chemistry"
It has been years since I had a chemistry course. Can someone give me the formula for combining the elements of earth, air, fire and water that I studied in my chemistry class so that I can make my own synthetic oil? I am paying about $9 a quart and maybe I could save some money by making my own synthetic oil.
For anyone interested a solar clothes dryer system including blue prints and a detailed components list is available for less than $50, @Triedag. And the system to produce ethanol is also available. The source might have the plans for synthetic oil also.
@Rod Knox–the research I have done seems to conclude that the solar clothes drying system doesn’t work well when it rains.
I would bet that in the next decade, synthetic oil will become the norm. I remember back in the early 1950s when we debated the advantages and disadvantages of detergent oil. I remember Tom McCahill’s statement “I prefer detergent in my bathtub, but not in my crankcase”.
Multi-viscosity oil was another product for which he had no use. He called it “sucker juice” and “10W-30 was a lousy number 10 and a lousy number 30”. He went so far as to say that the real reason for multi-viscosity oil was so that service stations wouldn’t have to stock as much oil from 10 weight through 50 weight. Well, since the mid 1960s, we have all been using multi-viscosity detergent oil. Now, I have no idea what McCahill, if he was alive today, would say about synthetic oil.
I say follow the manufacturer’s oil change intervals as shown in the manual, use whatever kind of oil you fell most comfortable with, and use synthetic oil without guilt if you drive under conditions that demand the very best from your motor oil (or the manufacturer specifies it). I think this is pretty straightforward, common sense advice.
Tom McCahill was quite entertaining. I was way under 16 when I read his Pop Sci column, and I probably couldn’t have determined what was real and what was show. Maybe some of those opinions were for show. I do recall one test of a big Pontiac wagon where he proclaimed it handled like a hippopotamus on.a wet river bank. Sublime.
Look, the major “cost” of doing an oil change for most people isn’t the $25 or so for the slippery stuff…it’s the PITA of having to break out the tools, ramps, etc.
So, to change the filter at some midpoint, you’d have to get the drain pan…probably tool box…maybe get the car up in the air…collect and store oil mess for recycling…and lower car and put all tools away.
Heck, if you’re going through all that trouble, may as well drain and refill oil…90% of the work’s already done!
(Oh, and I can believe OP ciuld be a PhD, non-native English speaker, with a boatload of book learning and zero practical experience at changing oil.)
@jtsanders Tom excelled in similes as long as your arm! I recall one when he tested the Triumph TR2 and called the instrument panel “as easy to read as a Marilyn Monroe calendar, and almost as informative”!
In his “Mail for McCahill” column there was a person who had trouble with the car’s electrics; every time he pushed the cigar lighter in, his electric seat rose and crushed his hat into the roof. Tom’s advice: “Buy a Zippo and wear a beanie”!
We used to have a passive clothes dryer system in the basement that worked off the waste heat from the furnace. The solar radiation/conduction/convection one in the attic worked best in the summer. The wind powered one in the backyard was best of all if not raining.
“Corners like a weasel in a drain pipe” was one of my favorite ones.
However, I never got McCahill in Pop Sci. I got it in Mechanics Illustrated, I am sure. When he died, so did the magazine. We only bought it for his articles and tests.
And, I still have a couple of his magazines, which were 100% his writing. Good stuff.
I think he would approve of synthetic oil today. When he didn’t like multi-viscosity oils, multi-viscosity oils weren’t all that good. One of his reasons for not liking them was they maybe started out at 10W-30 but with a bit of contamination in normal winter use, he said they deteriorated to mostly a lousy 30.
Modern oils today are great stuff, even the dino, though synthetic is much better if you are willing to pay the difference. I am, and with changes at 8,000 miles the extra cost is very small if any.
@irlandes, you are probably right. I was under 10 at the time, and I read both magazines. Still, he was a lot of fun, no matter where his columns appeared.
Tom McCahill was definitely in Mechanics Illustrated, I had a subscription at 14, and kept it up till the magazine folded.
A friend of mine ran onto an old Mechanics Illustrated at a garage sale. It contained a road test that Tom McCahill did on the 1948 Buick.I recalled that that was his first published road test. (Not that I read it when it was new.) I offered to give him the $1 he paid for it, but he wouldn’t sell. Mc Cahill ruffled a lot of car company feathers, but also made them strive to build better cars. I wonder if they will ever get it right.
I suppose the OP could have a foreign PhD in Chemistry and use bad English grammerin’… (Good term of4450.) But I doubt it.
I suppose he could cook up synthetic oil in his basement lab. I mean, look what Dr. Frankenstein was capable of doing in his… But I doubt it.
Personally, I think OP just wanted to sound smart and pat himself on the back
@MG_McAnick I think Tom McCahill’s first road test was on a 1946 Buick. I have a 1966 issue which celebrates his 20 years of road tests. For that issue, Mechanix Illustrated rounded up a 1946 Buick Super similar to the one he tested in 1946 and they also found a 1946 Ford that he also road tested in 1946. These cars were compared with the 1966 models of the Buick and the Ford.
Tom noted that to road test the Buick, GM told him that the company did its own car tests and weren’t interested in independent tests. Armed with only a letter about official introduction dates, McCahill went to a railroad yard where Buicks were being loaded onto railroad cars. He bribed a railroad worker after showing him the letter into unloading one of the Buicks and the test was underway. To obtain a 1946 Ford for the road test, he went to the Ford factory and convinced them he was only looking to take photographs . At first, he was only allowed to drive around the test ground with a Ford employee along, but finally convinced the Ford employee that he was harmless and took off on his own for the road test.
Of the 1946 Buick, when he compared it with the 1966 Buick Wildcat, he said “There isn’t a single feature of the 1946 pride of Flint that I would like to bring back”.
He was more gracious about the 1946 Ford. He and an assistant raced the 1946 Ford against the 1966 Ford Galaxie on the test track. Tom drove the 1946 and could outrun the 1966 because the 1946 could take corners better. Of course, the 1966 Ford Galaxie with its 390 cubic inch engine could run away from the 1946 on the straight stretches. McCahill concluded that the 1966 Ford should only be ordered by a potential buyer with the export suspension.