Hey guys,
Just curious, does anyone here know what kind of oil the AAA Car Care shop actually uses for their Semi-Synthetic oil change?
On the car that I recently bought, previous owner took it to AAA Car Care for oil change. On the service record, it says that they replaced the oil with Mobil Semi-Synthetic 5W30.
Looking at Mobil oil products, I don’t see it anywhere that they offer semi-synthetic oil. It’s either dino or full synthetic.
if the oil change was 25 bucks you can bet your ass it was regular oil
All oil change places used synthetic blend as the standard oil now
Wonder how many add a quart of synthetic to a 55 gallon drum of conventional and call it a blend though?
I order all my bull oil through Kendall. What qualifies the oil as “synthetic blend” I couldn’t tell you. However I know it’s dirt cheap per quart.
Exactly!
Kendall full synthetic is probably the cheapest you will find.
They can’t seriously mix dino and synthetic 50:50 on the premise, right? That sounds pretty crazy to me.
It just puzzled me that their invoice shows Mobil Synthetic Blend oil. Perhaps Mobil actually blend special kind of mix for them?? Weird.
pretty much everything under $5 /qt is a blend even if it says full synthetic. and there is nothing wrong with that. I don’t know anybody who has had a problem because they used oil that wasn’t good enough on a street driven car.
This is relevant.
basically they say it doesn’t matter what oil you use.
No, it’s manufactured as a blend. Basic oil is obsolete really. Nobody mixes oil in house. But if you goto firestone, Monro,sears auto, pep boys, you’re getting a 20 dollar synthetic blend oil change
Gotcha. The reason I asked is because I’m not planning to take it back to AAA for oil change. I do my own oil change and I would preferably wants to continue using the same brand and type of oil that has been used in the past few years. But, whatever, I’ll just use whatever I normally buy.
For regular driving under regular conditions.
How many of us do that?
Building motors for many years I learned a long time ago that any motor that gets any sort of heavy use needs a true synthetic. The trouble is what exactly is a “synthetic”?
Look here.
There used to be a Mobil 1 commercial which showed oil burning in a frying pan. We overheated a few motors and that does happen. Smells awful. We went to strictly a true synthetic from then on.
While the logic of using any oil with the proper API certification should work it doesn’t. Anyone familiar with VW/Audi turbo motors and what happens if you put " regular" oil in them knows.
And there ARE better oils than others. Look at a lot of SCORE trucks and other endurance series. Shameless pitch here, but NEO rules especially with gear oils.
As far I know any oil that says synthetic on it doesn’t mean its synthetic at all. I have heard as long as the oil meets certain standards it can be called synthetic or semi synthetic. I know that when superior changed our oil it was regular oil and when they topped of the tank the label got changed to semi synthetic magically. And the tank was half full already.
While we’re talking about synthetic vs. dino, I had this one theory/myth that I kept to myself and not sure whether it’s true or not. I think I need someone to bust my myth.
Back when I was driving my Civic, I switched the oil from dino to full synthetic (Mobil 1). For whatever reason, I started noticing oil consumption after the switch. The car did not consume any oil (or close to negligible) while it was running on dino oil. Reading some posts online, some people suggested that when switching from dino to full synthetic, it may have caused the seal to contract because of the more aggressive cleaning nature of full synthetic oil. Thus, oil will start to seep out and get burned in the process.
Whether this is true or not, I don’t know. But, just for the sake of it, I stopped switching to full synthetic on my later cars if the car originally came with dino and not specifically being told to use full synthetic. It’s cheaper anyway.
Anybody? Feel free to bust this myth.
I normally go with Valvoline, but, I think I’ll start using Pennzoil. I’m thinking of going with Pennzoil Gold synthetic blend for my next oil change with Subaru filter. That should be good for at least 4K to 5K, I think.
Some synthetics are di-ester based and will act as a detergent. They won’t shrink the seals but any varnish that has built up on the seals or the shaft going through the seal may get cleaned up. The resulting gap may cause leakage past the seal.
If you run a turbo motor you should be running a “good” synthetic. Gum and varnish buildup in the turbo oil lines can cause all sorts of grief ala VW/Audi 1.8T. Otherwise if the oil meets the API specs for your motor it should be fine. The only caveat to that is that oil is never pure, there are always contaminants. Some vendors do a better job at removing them than others. In addition the additive packages can vary greatly from brand to brand.
NEO is truly a synthetic. It is a di-ester manufactured base stock. It doesn’t start from a crude base stock and then get tweaked into a blnd or otherwise named synthetic.
Kendall is a great motor oil.
Conoco Phillips makes it, they make motorcraft oil for ford, which gets great reviews.
Firestone chain stores use Kendall oil, semi syn. I put it in my wife’s toyota for years, 19.99 for an oil change and I don’t have to do it myself.
I am a bob is the oil guy geek.