I love to argue with little teenage girls, spoiled brats whose parents bought them expensive cars ..... read and learn, boys, read and learn ....
Whether synthetic oil is bad stuff or good stuff depends on who you talk to, but you should not base your opinion on what you've "heard around here", and c'mon, the ones of you that can "feel" the difference when they made the switch, give me a break, i bet you also notice your car running faster after you wash it right? And a lot of what you hear from backyard mechanics is rumor and myth. Myth # 1 is the claim that you don't have to change Synthetic oil as often as regular motor oil. Remember when Mobil 1 said you could go 25,000 miles between oil changes with synthetic oil? Notice they haven't said that for a good number of years? Keep that thought on the back burner for now... Myth #2 is that synthetic oil causes oil leaks. In this article I'm going to try to dispell these myths for you with the cold hard facts about the differences and similarities between dino vs. synthetic oil.
Let's talk first about what "dino" oil is (Dino is short for Dinosaur, which is when it started forming). Dino oil is created from something called "Base Stock". Base stock what the oil companies get after they have processed the crude oil that comes from the ground. From there, additives are combined with the Base Stock, to create our motor oil. There are 7 main additives which include anti-foaming agents, anti-corrosion, etc, etc. At the molecular level, dino oil contains molecules of varying sizes. Imagine the floor of a gymnasium covered with basketballs, baseballs, volleyballs, and beach balls. Now imagine that all those different size "balls" are moving around, flowing past the floor. Every time a ball surface contacts the floor surface, the ball absorbs heat from the floor. That is how oil removes heat from your engine components, from surface to surface contact.
Now imagine the same gymnasium floor covered in uniformly sized golf balls. Smaller, more uniform molecules can absorb more heat from a surface, because there are more of them AND they have a larger surface to volume ratio which means they have more surface area contact. That's what synthetic oil is. A man-made "Base Stock", where all the molecules are the same size, and smaller than those in dino oil. Better heat transfer, better lubricating properties, and a lot wider temperature range without breakdown, are now obtained.
Myth #1 debunked
Oil does not break down under normal use. This is true of both dino and synth oil and is also the reason why you take oil to the Recycling Center and not the trash dump. So if oil itself doesn't ever degrade, why do we have to change it? The answer is twofold: additives and contamination. It will probably surprise you to learn that synthetic oil has all the same additives that dino oil has! The additives in oil DO break down, which is part of what necessitates oil changes. The other reason for regular oil changes is that with use, motor oil becomes contaminated (dirt, water, acids, etc). Using synthetic oil does not protect against either of these problems, which is why you CANNOT go further between oil changes when running a synthetic. You should still change your synthetic oil at the same intervals as you do with dino oil. Anyone want to guess how many claims Mobil 1 had to pay to people that were going 25,000 miles between changes?
Myth #2 debunked
Synthetic oil causing oil leaks is another commonly spread myth. The truth of the matter is that if all your engine seals and gaskets are in good condition, synthetic oil will NOT leak in your engine. The myth started because on occasion, an engine will leak with synthetic oil, but not dino oil. The reason for this is that the smaller molecules of the synthetic are able to get past very small crevices, where the larger molecules of dino oil cannot. But this does not mean that the synthetic oil has caused the leak, it simply has "discovered" an infant leak, and regardless of what oil you are running, this infant leak will eventually grow to a size that will allow dino oil to occupy and pass also. Synthetic oil has not been shown to deteriorate engine seals or gaskets. It is not some evil solvent that will break down sealant, or anything like that. Like was said earlier, it is just a man-made base stock, that is uniform and smaller in molecule size than dino oil. Nothing more, nothing less.
There is one thing I need to clarify though -- if you are not running an oil filter, there really is no point to using synthetic since your oil is going to become contaminated very quickly. Your engine will still benefit somewhat from it, but due to the higher cost of synthetic oil, the gain of running it before it becomes contaminated is negligible. But, hey, what do i know, i'm a newbie, newbie to what, to a forum with a couple of spoiled teenagers? I guess that's why i hard such a hard time finding an unmolested IS.
