We have a low use car that I change every 6 months regardless. Sometimes that is the proper thing. It sits around collecting condensation.
I've seen Amsoil pushed for years on various Motorcycle and car forums.
A lot of the same talking points. A lot of "I put Amsoil in and I can FEEL the difference!!"
Typically, tossed in vehicles that people won't keep more than a couple of years, under 10. You get a lot of "Bro...I tore down my motor and that thing was clean. AMsoil rocks!!" (meanwhile you'll have someone who just used plain old dino oil and their motor looks and performs the same after the same amount of abuse and mileage)
I never bought into the hype of Amsoil. I'm not a professional racer and my vehicles do not see any sort of extreme usage where I need to get picky with oil.
In my cars, I stick to whatever meets manufacturer recommendation. In my bikes, I will use whatever snyth or synth blend is on sale. If it so happens that Amsoil is cheaper than what else is available then I'll use it.
I think a lot of Amsoil users by the Amsoil so they can get the sticker to put on their vehicle.
lol if you just want a sticker, I'll send you one for free. I have a pile of them on a shelf somewhere.
Cool!!
I'll need to rearrange the Type R, TRD, Single obese women + 5 cats, Autobot and Wolfsberg edition stickers on my Camry but I think I can make it fit.
MR2 owners are always the kindest people.
I've been using Amsoil for about 7 years now in both my car and bike. I learned about it on my old v rod motorcycle forum. The v rod was pretty popular for burning a bit of oil. After switching to Amsoil from regular Dino I can attest that I found a difference in how the clutch worked and the engine was smoother. In the 30,000 km I rode out on my bike it didn't burn any oil.
From my understanding amsoil is one of the true synthetics while others are just blends and labelled as synthetic.
I've also encountered a lot of people that absolutely love the product or they hate it with a passion being turned off by the way it's sold or calling it snake oil.
Either way, you pay $ 15 per year and can buy it at wholesale cost. It's not expensive when you do the math.
When doing research for what oils to use in my Miata I found that UOAs of AMSOIL that looked better than anything else, especially their MTL oil. UOAs on mutliple turbo track Miatas showed that it well out-lasted a season of racing, which is damn impressive.
Was that gear oil or engine oil? I am debating the trusty Rotella T6 5w40 or Amsoil for my next change.
I don't have many on-hand... the manual transmission oil was the stuff you sold me (works incredibly well according to my shifter feel) and here is a UOA for 10W40 AMSOIL vs Rotella Synth 5W40(?) Also note the posters comments on gear oil and wheel bearing grease.
http://forum.miata.net/vb/showthread.php?t=402529
This is a turbo track car, so all wear rates are considerably accelerated compared to a street-driven car.
How did your 15k analysis do. Are you still using Amsoil?We may only have Amsoil's own data to judge, but I think there's something said by the resounding silence from every other manufacturer. They've clearly decided it isn't in their best interest to be compared to Amsoil or each other.
I'll be sending in a UOA for a 15,000 mile, severe-use interval on my 250K+ Accord V6 soon. Zero oil additions. Interested to see the results.
How did your 15k analysis do. Are you still using Amsoil?
That poster hasn't been seen for nearly four years now.
Fortunately between the time when this thread was active and now, the YouTube channel Project Farm came into being and did a giant oil showdown series comparing several brands of oil.
Amsoil was the winner with Pennzoil Ultra Platinum a very close second. Amsoil had the edge in the wear test but PUP had the edge in the evaporative loss test.
If you watch the entire series you can see how synthetic oil isn't synthetic oil and there can be significant differences between brands for cold flow, wear, and evaporative loss.
Personally I buy Amsoil, unless Pennzoil Ultra Platinum is on sale. I use 0W-20 and the PUP is frequently over $40, about the same price as the 0W-20 signature series Amsoil. Occasionally it goes on sale at Walmart for $20-30 and is a no-brainer at that price.
I have a small turbo tuned and modified for extra power so I rely on the formula of Amsoil and PUP to reduce knock/LSPI and keep wear to a minimum since I am very hard on the engine. The exceptional performance of both oils in the evaporative loss test also reduces/slows the buildup of carbon on the intake valves of direct injected engines.
And Project Farm's videos are mostly just entertainment.
For instance, PF's "evaporation test" is absolutely an uncontrolled test at best and is just a poor attempt to replicate a standardized scientific test of oil (ASTM D5800) which generates the NOACK number, the evaporation testing of oil.....NOACK is test of an oil sample is heated at 250 °C for 60 minutes with a constant flow of air over it, something not done or considered in PF's testing. Using coffee carafes may actually induce very large variation in testing and there's no standards at all. The more useful info is NOACK, not Project Farm.
The wear test.....a takeoff on a grease test. No oil is ever tested like PF does because it doesn't have any real application to an ICE. But again, PF is somewhat interesting entertainment.....just no real info to be derived from it.
The most interesting thing is that bacon fat performed really well the lubricity testing by displaying great wear protection. If only he could get some right whale fat, the king of animal fats....Well, when we get comprehensive oil testing done by a third party that isn't sponsored by an oil company, we can forget project farm.
For now, it's the only non-sponsored testing I've ever seen. Seems pretty interesting to me his results are very similar to the little amount of laboratory oil testing the public gets to see, mostly sponsored by Amsoil.
If you've got access to data, resources, and testing results I am unaware of I'd love to see it.