2003-2011 [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
Uhm, yeah, I've heard that Amsoil is good. Very good. Some people who take engines apart have told me that it's "the best." Only trouble is, from my perspective as a consumer and a theoretician, the reputation isn't backed up by industry standard approvals. On the web site, the 0W30 is recommended for engines requiring ILSAC GF3 or GF4 oil. But does it have an ILSAC starburst logo on the bottle? No. They say it's for engines requiring API SM, SL, SJ, etc., but is there an API license logo on the bottle? No. What they do print is exceptional 4-ball wear test performance on all their oils, a test which may or may not be representative of what's going on in our engines. They also print a value of HTHS (high temperature high shear) viscosity which is below that recommended by Saab (GM LL 025B seems to require ACEA A3/B3 performance, which is 3.5 or higher on the HTHS scale. Mobil 1 0W40 is, iirc, 3.6, and Castrol 0W30 is 3.5.)
So why don't they submit their oils for testing? To be kind, they have a large number of individual products, and testing each one would be a fortune. They have more different viscosities and formulations than Mobil 1, with possibly just 5% of the total sales as M1. Add to that Mobil's huge volume of conventional product over which to amortize much of the cost of having their own test lab in which to run the approvals.
So the argument in favor of Amsoil is word of mouth. Do you want "the best oil", or do you want stickers on a label? The argument against is just that, it lacks those stickers on the label. As for Amsoil 0W30, I wouldn't use it in a Saab because the HTHS is less than what's recommended, even if I were committed to using some kind of Amsoil in everything I owned.
posted by 24.93.20...
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