should i buy castrol or penzoil or valvoline oil. Which brand of oil do u people think is good.
I use Pennzoil 10W30 in the MDX, change every 4-6,000 miles. If I switched to synthethic, I'd use Mobil One 0-W20. Yes, it's showing better oil test numbers than 5W20. If you use 5W20 dino oil, as recommended by Honda, abandon their oil change interval. Testing shows this oil is shot at 3,000 miles.
Probably from used oil analysis. UOA can test for wear particles, contamination, and viscosity loss/gain. If an oil is shot, sometimes the VI improvers shear down and no longer provide adequate protection. In other cases the oil excessively thickens to the point where engine parts can be oil starved at startup.
Mobil is no longer marketing Mobil 1 0W-20. They still may be making a 0W-20 for Honda (for the hybrids). However - there's now a Mobil 1 5W-20 on the market. Also - Mobil's datasheets show that Mobil 1 5W-30 is awfully close to being a 5W-20. I suppose the problem some people are having with the "conventional" 5W-20 oils are that they seem to include short-lived anti-wear additives to make it protect adequately. Mobil 1 probably doesn't need as much and will maintain its antiwear properties longer. What the heck is "dino" oil these days? Many "conventional" oils use higher performance "Group II" base. Some may even be semi-synthetic (even without being labelled as such), although the definition of "synthetic" is a but murky these days. Ford's Motorcraft 5W-20 is labelled as being "semi-synthetic", although it's unclear who makes it for them (or if they change suppliers often).
that motorcraft stuff is abysmal. i was initially attracted to the price & the "semi-synthetic" label, but all my seals started leaking badly within a few hundred miles. as in the main seal was leaking onto the exhaust so bad you'd leave a smoke trail through the car park. the motor started getting real rattly after about 2500 miles too. i'm now back on castrol & the leaking has all but stopped. 89 civic.
So you take an 89 Civic and just put in synthetic? So I guess the fact that your seals are bad in the first place doesn't really matter to you. The only thing synthetic did was clean your engine and seals of crud that had accumulated and now they are leaking. Put the old dino oil back in and hopefully it will sludge up enough again to seal the engine up for you.
sorry to burst your little bubble, but castrol is semi-synthetic too. it simply has a much better base & superior additive package than that ford garbage. that's also why it doesn't leave the engine rattling like a bag of nails. that ok for you?
What the heck is "synthetic" these days? I'm getting the feeling that in order to get decent performance out of a 5W-20, even the so-called "conventional" 5W-20 oils are using some Group III or PAO base oils. As for Castrol - they're rumored to used older "Group I" base oil for most of the Castrol GTX lineup, while most others have gone to more advanced "Group II". Pennzoil calls their base oil "PureBase", Chevron uses "IsoSyn", while others just say "group II".
good observations. the only thing we know for sure is that these words are the product of the marketing department, not the lab. while something like castrol gtx may not be the best of the best, from my viewpoint, any oil that can clean the crud out of old engines like so many of the clunkers i've had leaving them looking pretty much deposit free, any oil that does not leave your engine sounding like an old tin can being kicked around by a couple of kids, any oil that does not make an old motor leak like a marine oil spill disaster, has /got/ to be worth serious consideration.
I used to only use Castrol over a decade ago when I was driving an Old rear drive Cutlass Supreme V8 (when all 4 barrel opened up on that carburetor, that car could chase down just about anything on 4 wheels). So, the engine was in great shape, event though the rest of the car was quickly disintegrating. That was awhile ago and the Castrol might have been good for the older engine, but my comparatively newer 98 Civic runs just as well on the Mobel 1 (230,000km of aggressive driving and no rattles on cold startup). In the case of Jim's 89 Civic, the Castrol might be the better choice then the Mobel-1, since the older engine (with loose seals) might have hard time retaining it... Pars
I usually buy the brand name oil that is on sale and meets the manufacturers recommendations. I never had an oil related problem following this procedure.
