At 11:33 PM 2/23/98 -0800, you wrote:
>Each change=
>5 quarts & 1 filter
>$23 $9.5
>
>This assumes 9,000 mi change interval for synth,
>and does not count for store trips, underhood time,
>etc....
>Synth is Cheaper, and I'll bet that the dino oilers
>will have to add a couple of quarts in 40,000 mi, since
>dino oil boils away under normal use, and synth does not.
Hello Mike,
First I would not reccomend 9,000 mile oil changes unless you do only
highway driving with a 10 quart oil pan on your ride (gotta give more time
to thoroughly heat all the oil too to burn off the blowby gasoline with
these big pans, I learned this the hard way with a road racer I owned,
imagine gaining oil on the dipstick?).
As to dino oil boiling away it is kinda true, what happens is that the oil
is made up of both light and heavy substances and the lights will boil off
faster. Synthetic oil is more uniform and thus it does not happen as
quickly. I do not know if the new SJ oils have changed this, they do
appear more refined.
Something to also consider is the increased gas mileage that you can
sometimes get from synthetics (however this Dakota of mine does seem to be
the worst case scenario for that.) However let us postulate that if the
synthetic was able to increase the gas mileage of the Dakota 1mpg from lets
say 16mpg to 17mpg, then over a 3000 mile oil change it would have saved us
$10 in fuel costs at $1 per gallon. The synthetic cost us about $3~4
dollars more per quart than dino, costing anywhere from $12~$20 total per
change depending on how much your truck took and the price you payed. Thus
the overall additional cost of the synthetic is $2~$10 per oil change.
So in this hypothetical situation if we change the synthetic at 3000 mile
intervals and then keep the truck for 150,000 miles, then the synthetic
costs us a maximum $500 over the life of this truck. (50 oil changes x
maximum $10 overall cost per change) That is a maximum cost in this scenario.
YMMV - Your Mileage May Very
Regards
Nicholas
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