Hello friends,
I have been observing this thread for some time now and there are interesting opinions.
first of all I will totally agree with @storm as his approach is very PRACTICLE and APPLICABLE to our country. This is how I see the whole situation:
In this country most of the people run Hondas (civic, city), Toyota (corolla), Suzuki (baleno, liana, cultus, mehran etc) I hope you agree to this point.
Now none of these cars are high performance cars and they do NOT have high performance engines of a Ferari, Vette or an F1 car with very narrow tolerances. Hope you agree to this point as well.
As we are not running high performance engines, I guess there is no point in using the best synthetic oils considering the cost benefits. To give you an example, Honda 3S gives us Caltex Havoline Red with SAE10W30 and API SL grade engine oil. This oil will protect your engine to the best (keeping in view the regular driving performed on our roads). The MAIN thing here will be to change engine oil regularly on time, by this I mean NOT to push your engine oils beyond 4000-5000 km or 3000 miles. And to change the good quality oil filter regularly as well. Mind you sludge does NOT build because of mineral oil, it builds due to poor maintanence of your car engine; meaning not changing oil and filter on time.
Now coming to the benefits of synthetic oils. Ofcourse I agree that synthetic oils are better than Mineral oils. If you trace history these oils were developed for high performance engines and aircraft engines.
Now people on this forum also claim that synthetics can be run for a higher mileage, have seen people claiming from 10,000-20,000km. Even if agreed to this, do we have equally good oil filters here which can last for such a long time? Even if some one does find these oil filters, it will be expensive and again increasing the cost of running your car. And a person can well avoid this additional cost?
Now let us take us a hypothetical example. We buy 2 brand new honda civics. Considering all the factors uniform we run one engine on regular Havoline oil provided by honda 3S and the other engine on high quality synthetic oils. And we change regularly both the engine oils according to the manufacturers recommendations. Lets say after 100,000 km would we see a lot of sludge in car No.1 which was run on regular(havoline red) engine oil? or will the engine be totally wrecked because it was run on mineral oil? I think the answer will be NO.
Now if we open both the eninges, we may see that the car run on synthetic oil will have less wear and tear on the engine components, however these differences will be observed with highly sophisticated gadgets. But the million $$$ question is :Will these minimal changes make any difference to an ordinary person who uses his/her car to commute from one place to the other or goes on the GT Road or Motorway? I think the answer will be NO again.
It is logical to keep running your car on an engine oil to which it is used to. For example a car has already been maintained on regular mineral engine oil for lets say 50,000-75,000 KM with an SAE grade of 10W40 or 20W50(toyota oem) or 10W30(Honda OEM) and then suddenly one switch to synthetic oils, well there can be leaking problems. It is not that every car will leak but some will. Thus it may give you additional headaches.
If you are a young enthusiast and have a lot of cash to burn, then go ahead fill your car with the best synthetic engine oils out there eg. Mobil-1.
CONCLUSIONS:
1.Agreed that synthetics provide better protection.
2.But in our local conditions with regular cars and their regular engines, there is NO need to switch to synthetics. Normal Mineral Engine Oils eg provided by Honda will provide adequate protection for the lifetime of your engine.
3. KINDLY, we should NOT present synthetic oil on this forum as if all the people running on mineral oils will destroy their car engines. If that was true then the OEMs, Toyota, Honda, Suzuki are not fools to be flooded with complaints of failed engines due to the use of Mineral Oils.
Thanks.
