Technique

Yo... I'm not trying to stir the pot, but maybe I should have been a bit clearer... I believe that oil is oil, in my experience... BUT, I have never used (or even seen/heard of) "generic $1 oil at walmart" probably because I have never looked in wal-mart... I was talking about brand name stuff... Like mobil, castrol, motorcraft, royal purple, whatever... I mean, whatever the local shops I've ever been to put in my cars has always been fine... Regardless of the brand, regardless of the w rating... My cars all run perfect...

Oil is just lubricant, engines are tough and will last to roughly 150k miles with no problem regardless of the oil you use... I change my oil once a year, which is roughly every 15k miles, and have never had problems... Longest I ever owned a new car was 125k miles though... So that's all I can speak to...

If you are trying to get 200k+ miles out of an engine, I dunno, maybe oil brand does matter...

lobuxracer

iTrader: (2)

What do you see in the pictures? I see different levels of varnish build up. I don't see anything that relates to service life or engine durability. I've seen engines with very ugly varnish that still measured out just fine on disassembly and still ran well before they were disassembled. I've also seen my own engines with little or no varnish after running Red Line at $8 a quart for years, but it doesn't mean anything about service life or the quality of lubrication. It just means there are more lighter elements to the oil that are breaking down and forming deposits. If the oil is changed frequently enough, there is still no significant damage to any part in the engine.

Pictures can be misleading. You really need to see the underside of the cam caps or the surface finish of the piston skirts if you want to see how well an oil really performed. Your pictures are what a marketing team uses to scare people. They do not even faze those of us who have rebuilt engines.