Oil trivia

[Michael Murphy <mmurphy@nais.com>]

My nephew's baptism yesterday brought Murphy family together for 1st
time in ~4 years.  No small feat considering parents, sister and I live
on Long Island but brothers are in FL, VA, RI, and China (Shanghai), but
I digress.  

I took the opportunity to pick my brother's brain about Mobil 1.
He is in Marine Lube Sales Management for Mobil so he does have a good
bit of knowledge of Mobil syn lub products, before you say ... marketing
hype ... he holds a BSE from USNA, 1980.  BTW, he admitted partial blame
for the high price of the Mobil 1 filter.  Some of his comments:

Oil/filter change intervals - no surprises here
"follow engine manufacturer's recommended interval for driving
conditions."  Shorter change interval is a waste of money/time/natural
resources, especially if you use a synthetic oil".  He uses Mobil 1,
changes oil every 12-15K miles w/filter change at ~6K miles.  His
reasoning, "hey, I've had my car's oil tested in the lab so I know when
its 'wearing out'".

Mobil 1 filter
Neat filtering media and good multipass test results.

Mineral oils (aka dino juice, regular motor oil)
All name brands are OK, but syn lubs (for any application) are proved to
be vastly superior to mineral oil.

Synthetic oils, which is best?
he laughed saying, ". . . the fact is 95+% of the base stock for these
oils is produced by Mobil.  The difference is in the additive packages".

Syn/mineral blends - "why? kinda defeats the purpose".

Jiffy Lube
"don't even think about it" in addition to sub par filters,
there is proof that some (not all) locations do not use proper viscosity
oil for the car and may substitute single weight when multi weight oil
is manufacturer requirement.

Then beer started to flow more freely and coherent conversation ceased.
It took 4 taxis to get everyone back to respective homes/hotels.
MJ Murphy