Synthetic Oil & Stuff

[ATTDCS!TMBWPO1!sjagernaut@dcstm1.attmail.com (Stephen Jagernauth)]

 Jeff W <hjr@buffnet.net> wrote:

>I don't know how the discussion started, but it had something to do with
>the fact that it was time to change the oil in the Audi.  The person
>responded with "Didn't you just change the oil?".  I responded with
>"yes, 2500 miles ago".  The person said that I was being wasteful.  When
>I inquired about his thoughts on changing oil, he responded "never"!
>(In actuality he thought that he changed the oil on average at 50K-60K
>or so)

This guy's an idiot where autos are concerned.   You can do us all a favor 
and post his
name and location so we try NOT to buy a car that he's owned.

>Of course, I would never follow his example, since I want to get 200K
>out of my cars.  But this does have a bearing on the synthetic vs dino
>discussion; why switch to synthetic if you are not lengthening the
>service period to offset the cost?

If you want to get 200k out of your car, change the oil frequently.  It's 
cheap insurance.
The only way to tell correct change intervals is to perform oil analysis. 
  Be
conservative and change at 3-5k for regular dino juice and double that for 
synthetic.
As an example, I perform oil analysis on my track car which spends a good 
deal of its
life at 7000rpm.   After 6k miles, the viscosity of Castrol Synthec 5W50 had 
broken down to
an SAE 30 weight viscosity.   The oil was still useable but you want to get 
the acids and other
byproducts of combustion out of your engine.   As an experiment, I tried 
regular Mobil 20w50 and
will change after 2k-3k in the Spring and compare the oil analysis results.

Just my $0.02,

Steve Jagernauth  ---------------->  sjagernauth@attmail.com
Audi 5k X 3
'74 911/3.0