540 RAT

Each to his own, but if you want max protection for real high performance/race engines, the extra Royal Purple film strength starts to look real good. As I said earlier, big blocks tend to lose roller lifters, and the extra film strength may be what is needed to make them live. Royal Purple's early products were developed for similar problems with industrial machinery, which it cured.

Plenty of hardcore dragracers use 0W? Royal Purple racing oil, which is of course very thin, so they barely hold any oil pressure. They do it for max hp that the thin oil helps with, yet the internals look like new when taken apart.

Racing Engine builder Joe Sherman got an extra 30hp in a 600hp small block Chevy just by switching from Valvoline 20W50 dino racing oil to Royal Purple 5W30 racing oil. He never saw that in any other oil. He uses it all the time in his shop and has nothing but good things to say about it. The best film strength and more hp, I'd say that was rather impressive myself.

Their street oil meets recent API requirements as well as GM's own GM4718M oil requirement for Corvette's, GTO's and others. So it must be pretty good on that count as well, because not all oil meets that requirement.

I have been using Royal Purple 5W30 street oil in two of my late model cars for some time now without issue. One is just a 200hp V6 daily driver, and the other is a 550hp supercharged V8 muscle car. They have been just fine, and in fact the supercharged engine's idle went up 100 rpm. A few other people I know, have been using it as well, and also like it just fine.

So the question I have for you naysayers is, what oil do you use in your own engines? And if the tech specs on an oil is not how you decide which oil to run, just how did you decide on that particular oil? About all that is left is guesswork and marketing hype, right?

Red Tornado

no hype, no cares. i guess and i don't give a damn about it.

i've been using valvoline regular dino oil (i don't waste my money on synthetic either), but i've also used whatever is one sale, doesn't matter to me what brand.

i've been doing this for 25 years.

i'm telling you i don't need no hyper high prices fancy bs oil. never did and never will. this hi-end crap is funny to me, it overkill for the street. and for hi-po engines my foot. oh, whoppy-****. it strikes me hilarious that oils like amsoil has this system of purchasing that almsot like an amway scam. to keep prices up over the top, of course.

the marketers can take their mobil 1, royal puple, red line, amsoil, or whatever the flavor of the day is, and shove it. there is absolutely no way my mind will change.

if i can find oil @ 0.89 cents a quart, i'll run for it.

now, what say you?

shop14

you will be singing a different tune when you blow your motor pop,wake up and smell the coffee.in your case the oil,cause it will be fried just like your thinking.i guess there is no difference between 87 and 93,s rated and z rated,brake shoes and brake pads,4speed and 6 speed,2 barrel and 4 barrel,need i go on? at the end of the run,your the looser. now what say you? sound familiar? think before you speak,write or race!

95wht6spd

I say Hot Rod 90, tell us how you REALLY feel!!!! LOL

Someone must have made you drink synthetic oil as a kid.

blade83

Very interesting results to say the least..

Being Aussie I know street Commodores VERY well.. lol.. I can tell you right now this magazine is not influenced by company back handers, their angle is always exposing the truths for the average joe, you guys can consider the commodore to be the MOST bogan (umm redneck or bubba would be your equivilant) of all vehicles, and believe me when I say that every 2nd car here is a Commodore.

Well I was a bit of a redline fan before, But I will most definatly be changing over to Royal purple, I dont expect the world.. but peace of mind is nice

GIJoe

hah almost same here.. Castro 10w30 is all I've EVER used in all my cars. Never had any issues. I am not a big believer in the extra cost of synthetic.

Kool88vette

I've got a 1995 GMC pick up with 145,000 on it. I always used Mobil One Synthetic in it. I runs like the day I bought it brand new. It just past a California smog and it doesn't use a drop of oil between changes.

steve40th

Well I use >>>>. Go to Bobs the oil guy forums and really see oil analysis comparisons, real world use etc. Then you will really get confused.

Red Tornado

that's the best answer yet. i should have just said the same thing, rather than expounding on the noise of $10/qt. oil for a daily street application, something on the order of probably 95% of the people on this board who will never have any use for it.

Pete K

I had an 84 dodge van that I used for work. Every 10k, I would change the oil and filter with the cheapest oil sold locally. I worked that truck like a mule until 1999, when I drove it to the junkyard. The body rotted off of it. Truck had 440,000 miles on it. I had to do a head gasket @220,000 miles, but otherwise no engine issues.
The truck I replaced it with was a brand new 1999 ford van. I have used walmart oil and a motorcraft filter and changed them every 3-5k. It just turned 100k.

What is my point? I am not sure, but cheap clean oil has worked well for me over the entire 24 years I have been driving and working on cars. Because of this, I will continue to do so. If I had more money, I would probably feel differently.

l1sikes

I'm with mseven: how come none of the tested oils were of the viscosity recommended by auto manufacturer's for use in mild climates; i.e., 10W 30 ?

If 60 weight was the best per the tests, and was free, I still wouldn't use it.

VMAX451

The article just tests one characteristic of the oil (film strength). There are many other important characteristics of oil such as shear stability, thermal characteristics, etc. etc., so take the results with a grain of salt. They mention this in the first part of the article, but pictures are more interesting so most people just skip over the boring test procedure part .

GIMMESOME

I live in a mild climate,and don't venture too far away.For me,straight 30w Chevron has always worked well for me in all my cars and trucks.
I try to change it before 5000mi.,and don't ride them too hard.So I tend to think it boils down to where it lives,how you drive it,and maintenance.Any oil's better then no oil at all.Just my 2 cents.

rocco16

"The article just tests one characteristic of the oil (film strength). There are many other important characteristics of oil such as shear stability, thermal characteristics, etc. etc., so take the results with a grain of salt." So very true, VMAX..


True story:
Back in the '70's, I was the parts dept manager for a large motorcycle and snowmobile dealer in Michigan. We sold lots of sleds and dirt bikes(all two-strokes then...). One day a salesman for Bardahl came in and said "We've just come out with the best two-stroke oil in the world, and I will prove it." So, we let him set up his test in the shop. It's what is known as the Four-Ball Wear Test. (some of you may have heard of it). It measures, of all things, wear.

He tested every brand of oil we carried, then tested his new Bardahl. The Bardahl's wear was about half of the amount of the next-best brand of oil. We were convinced, ordered a truckload of the stuff, and praised it to all our customers. They bought a bunch of it.

Wasn't too many weeks before we started getting feedback, though. The stuff would separate out of the gas in cold weather, would foul plugs constantly, smoked excessively, carboned-up rings and exhaust ports quickly, seemed to have poor corrosion resistance, and generally was most unpleasant oil.
Turns out that the Four-Ball test was extreme, and that few engines actually experience the conditions of the test. We sent a lot of Bardahl back to the distributor.

Some things I learned from that is to take any test with a grain of salt, especially a test performed by an oil manufacturer (they aren't going to publish a test that shows their product doing poorly, are they), and that you have to look at the big picture, not one isolated test for one property.

Larry
code5coupe

__________
not easily impressed....

Red Tornado

thank you pete for backing up my (somewhat oppressive) comments. you may remember about 2 years ago when i thought this expensive fancy, neato-burrito, high-priced synthetic, pathetic, oil war stuff was the rage, that i needed expensive stuff to feel safe with my pathetic tiny ole' truck motor small block.

that stupidity lasted about 6 months. as i said, for 25 years i've been putting in the whatever's been on sale, never had an iota of a problem. i like keeping my pennies, God knows, other things in life cost an arm & leg anyway, so does just even owning an old corvette.

so the wheeler-dealer amsoil, redline, royal-boil, or even mobil 1 seller can all go pound sand and stick with their porsch or C5/C6 buddies who are dumb enough to be happy about 5 qts of that stuff replaced every 2,000 miles of grand-daddy street driving

now you're being unneccesarily nice somehow i'll bet dollars to donuts that if you were a multi-millionaire, you'd still laugh at the overpriced, overkill oil we're talking about here, for the street/strip.

geesch, i feel extra obnoxious today, must be the damn weather

Pete K

It all boils down to what you are protecting. In my case, I can overhaul the engine in my c4 for less than $1000. I will be damned if I spend hundreds of dollars extra a year to protect such an inexpensive investment. Especially because my history with clean, cheap oil is very good. I have hurt parts almost every way possible, but never had fluids let me down.
Everything I own has frequent fluid changes. Even if my thinking is dead wrong, I am smart enough to know that fluid suspends dirt, dirt is bad, and clean fluid replaces dirty fluid.

Aardwolf

FWIW cheap oil is fine yes but it will break down at a lower temp then higher dollar synthetics. At the track I always run a decent synthetic. Also you can run them a long time. I have a friend that uses lab testing, he is getting 20,000 miles on an oil change. Going longer on the oil change evens out the cost and makes you do the work of changing it less often.

Red Tornado

aardwolf, you are certainly correct in that is resists breakdown under high heat ranges, like 260-280* oil temps, and its stable 3x as long as regular dino.

but here's my rub......i hereby submit most all the folks on this board don't maintain high-stress, high speeds on an oval track, plus they change their expensive synthetic oil about every 3,000 miles which is completely ridiculous. then they change their $10 oil filters every oil change which is again pretty funnby. to boot. they drive their vettes like any regular average car on the street, for the most part.

and assuming there's little to no debate about the above, than anything other than cheap dino oil is a silly exercise in waste for them.

i suppose their big-bucks bank accounts keep them sleeping well at night.

so all this talk about royal this and amsoil that, cracks me up.

Aardwolf

When I don't track the car I use normal dino witch gets changed once a year. I put on under 5,000 per year. Changing the synthetic every 3,000 cracks me up to!

540 RAT

Thanks for the input Blade.