http://thegarage.jalopnik.com/why-expensive-oil-is-a-waste-of-money-1797241527 full article: https://www.blackstone-labs.com/Newsletters/Gas-Diesel/July-1-2017.php Pretty interesting, especially as they specifically the Subaru EJ25 in their examples
I heard a few years ago that test like this determined that Wal-Mart's oil, Super Tech I think(?), Is one of the better/best oils out there. I use it in everything but the WRX.
It would be interesting to see the results of longer change intervals (throwing out maybe any data under, say a 5k mile change) so the average change interval would be closer to like 7500ish miles. Although the total "count" for each brand would be smaller in that range, it seems it would give better insight into the longevity of the different oil brands. Pretty interesting read though for sure. I'm going to read the actual Blackstone report later today if I get some time
Every time I send in my oil to Blackstone labs, they alway tell me to try longer oil change intervals. Apparently my engine is in great shape. The longest I've ever gone on t6 is 5000. They told me to try 6000+ I feel at that point, it's the filter that might cause problems.
Wal-Mart's Super Tech stuff across the board is pretty good. It's not being made in a shed in China somewhere from old recycled stuff. It's made by a well established and knowledgeable company (Warren Performance Products) that makes some good products. I've switched over to using a lot of their products since they're cheap and are more than competitive with Mobil, Castrol, Valvoline, etc. I don't know that I'd run SuperTech products in an all out track car (Motul or a similar choice certainly is better for the track, but expensive for a street vehicle). I have the gear oil in my forester's 5 spd manual and rear diff, the outback's front/rear diff, and the impreza's front/rear diff. ATF in the Impreza and Outback's transmission with no issues (high mileage on both transmissions too). ATF also in the power steering system on all 3 vehicles. Brake fluid in the outback and impreza (have slightly higher BP stuff in the forester). Haven't tried the oil yet because I'm swimming in Mobil 1 stuff from the rebates they always offer. Hard to beat $10 for 5qts of mobil 1. There certainly are better fluids out there, but I'd say SuperTech is right up there with the main oil/ATF/gear oil/etc lines from the name brands. Which means it's more than adequate for most vehicles. The biggest problem most people have with SuperTech is that it comes from Walmart and is cheap. If it was sold by Napa for 2x the price, everyone would be okay with it. From the UOA I've seen from Blackstone and other places, the Subaru engines are incredibly well wearing. Even that blackstone article shows the subaru universal averages to be significantly below some other well regarded engines. Some of the highest wear values seen in a subaru EJ are often below or on the lower end of what most other engines see for wear. I've always wondered how much of that is due to Subaru's abnormally high oil pressure in their engines. More lube is never a bad thing.
That's really the main issue for me. I do my best to not give them my money, but unfortunately they usually have the best prices on T6. And they have SuperTech.
Spinning off of this brings up the thought that the filter being used would be a variable with results as well, since not all filters are created equal. The same oil and same change interval, but using different filters for each test might be interesting to see too.
Exactly my thought. I use oem every time, never fails. Although, engines in worse shape might have problems trying to hit higher miles on oil.
Problem with all these oil analyses is they use wear metals ppm concentration as their final output. What does this mean? does anyone know the correlation between ppm/metal and say engine life or some other "hard outcome" we can all understand?
What more "hard outcome" do you want? The amount of metal in the oil is a direct correlation of how the engine is wearing. Metal parts in the oil is a result of engine wear. Specifically rings, cams, crank, bearings, cylinder walls etc. are all oiled friction surfaces that result in problems if they wear too much. More metal = more wear.
"Upon receiving samples, Blackstone sends the oil through a spectrometer to learn how much of that oil—in parts per million—is made up of wear elements like aluminum (which may come from pistons or the engine case), chromium (from piston rings), iron (from cylinders, camshafts, or other parts of the valvetrain), copper (from bushings, bearings, oil coolers), lead (from bearings) and tin (also from bearings)."
It's not that simple. This is what people call a "surrogate endpoint" in well designed studies. You need to prove that a surrogate endpoint correlates with a hard endpoint in order to use it consistently. Here we assume that metal=more wear but this is not a straight forward assumption. 1) Why more metal=more wear? Maybe (totally making this theory up) oils that lubricate engine components better comes in contact with them more and thus has more metal particles after such an analysis. I am not saying this is the case but you can keep coming up with theories like this forever. 2) What is more? More than average? What is a "significant" increase of metal particles above which you should worry or you can say an oil work better or an engine has more wear? 3) Which metals are important? I can give you thousands of examples in science where surrogate endpoints proved useless. So unless we can specifically prove that metals X,Y,Z above concentrations A,B,C have been shown to correlate with premature engine failure or something more tangible (and they might have done this already but not to my knowledge) these oil analyses don't help much.
Yes, there are other factors, but with over 5,000 samples just of Subaru 2.5 turbo engines, if there was much of a pattern, it would probably show up. They point out which metals come from which components. So it's not hard to deduce when you have a higher-than-average levels of a certain material which parts of your engine are wearing. An engine is a pretty closed system, if there's metal in the oil, it's from your engine, or you've got bigger problems. I challenge you to come up with a single believable theory that could suggest otherwise. They point out what numbers aren't worth noting: And what are: at 10ppm compared to the average of 18 with 3.28ppm/1000 miles compared to the average of 3.26 They're pretty clear in their conclusion: I think they did a great job of isolating other influences. But they acknowledge that there are variables, and the best way is to get samples from your specific engine to make a truly informed decision.
Pattern of what? Do they have follow-up on these engines with higher than average metals concentrations? No. If they did they would say we saw more engines/engine components fail at these concentrations for these metals and this might be something to watch out for. This would be a useful pattern. Without (something like) that their conclusions are, at best, speculative. I agree that metals are coming from the engine and likely suggest wear. I agree that a difference of 8ppm seems "larger" than the others they usually observe but I have no idea what to do with these values or the qualitative differences between oils without correlation with some meaningful endpoints. And from what they say I think they have no idea either. I am not arguing with you. I am just trying to understand why/when did we start placing so much emphasis on these analyses without first r e a l l y looking at what they are telling us.
what would you suggest for the WRX then (I'm in a 2016)? I go to Morries and they use some performance synthetic, but I never thought to check into it for a preferred brand...
I'm personally not sure what the new stuff requires (or "prefers"), but I use the Brotella T6 in mine. Kinda funny seeing how many of the Subaru samples were T6.
OK. I ll give you that. I still don't get what we (practically) do with all these values/metals in these reports and when we should worry. And why.
And yes i know that in the end people will say just play it safe and go with the oil that has the lowest metal concentrations but this is like saying cut the bacon forever because your cholesterol is above average (but still within norma)-(not that quiting bacon is a tragedy of similar proportions to loosing an engine, no bacon is way worse)... Basicaly we need normal values/ranges for these.
Most people just throw in some oil, and that's that. I feel like I have a base line with my vehicle now after having Blackstone test my oil 5 times over 4 years. If something looks weird in the report, which they would be able to say it's this or that based on what metal is showing up, I might be able to get ahead of catastrophic failure. Not really sure why one wouldn't do this with their vehicle.
with these reports you cant A) define weird B) define what is causing A Let alone take measures to prevent a bad outcome that these reports just cant predict. I.e i think they are interesting to look at but that's about it. And vice versa : a "normal" report should not reassure u or think u can arbitrarily extend (the already somewhat arbitrary) oil change intervals. That is what I am suggesting. Just trying to be a bit rigid about what the reports actually inform us about and what we 'd like to think they inform us about. On a similar note I think the company should have a clear disclaimer about what its results might mean and especially what they dont mean (until it gets more data). In the end one can do whatever they want and that is ok.
Sure but I think he meant if 10 ppm is normal, what would be "super concerning, your engine is about to blow" levels of contamination?
