If it’s better and you care about your engine, why not use it?
I’m going to pull a number out of my hat and say synthetic oil is 3 times better then regular dyno…OK…let’s agree on this number.
So if people can get 300k miles on regular dyno…then using synthetic will let you to 900k…let’s say only 500k. Do YOU keep cars that long?? Have you ever kept a car longer then 300k miles.
It does give me peace of mind, and I’ll continue using it. I suppose there’s a lot of other corners I could cut in life too, but I’ll refrain also on most of them. I’d also like to mention that the oil changes cost about twice as much, but do last at least twice as long. And if I don’t use oil between changes, there’s more savings. And since I live in a state that experiences fairly cold winters, with the synthetic, the engine cranks noticeably faster when ice-cold. If you’ve ever tried to pour dino oil vs. synthetic in 0 deg. F weather, it’s obvious which one flows better in your engine on those cold winter mornings. While the color of the used oil isn’t a definitive way to judge its quality, it seems to me that if dino oil is nearly black after 5,000 miles, while synthetic is still pretty clear, the synthetic oil has certainly denatured less! I may not have kept a car 300K miles, but not because the poor, tired engine was too mechanically worn out. There’s a reason syn. oil is factory-fill in high performance cars. While if I bought a used Kia or some other “Bic lighter throwaway” of a car, I might use dino oil, I choose to use better oil in my vehicles. I feel that if you treat something well, whether it be a person or a machine, it won’t let you down when you really need it, and if it somehow does, at least it won’t be your fault.
To those who rightfully pointed out in response to my earlier post that dino is not sufficient for some applications (turbos primarily), I agree. I should have stated in my post that if your owner’s manual recommends synthetic, or if you have an extreme condition like extreme cold, synthetic is worth the extra cost.
Allow me to correct my oversight. But also to add that IMHO if synthetic is required, any API and SAE badged synthetic will work just as well. Extra cost for a fancy name and some dye is wasted money. I hate seeing people “soaked” by gimmicks.
Also, let me add that “blend” is not the same as “synthetic”. www.carbibles.com has a good primer on oils. A visit is recommended.