Have you ever wondered why is synthetic motor oil so expensive? When your standing at the oil shelf at AutoZone what is the difference between the oil in this bottle for $6 and the oil in this bottle for $2?
If you don’t know the difference the answer to that second question is simply you might be getting ripped off for the $4 difference in the price of oil which amounts to $24 of rip off per oil change (almost $100 dollars a year)
Now if you have a good synthetic oil, which I am going to say is a PAO basestock with premium additives, then you should actually save money. So if you are not being cheated and the cost of the processing of the oil actually justifies the price then here is what you are getting for your money.
Engine lubricating oils are comprised of two parts… the basestock or base oil and the additive package. It used to be only PAO basestocks were allowed to be called synthetic but that changed in 1997. Now the term synthetic is used loosely.
PAO basestocks are manufactured from the base hydrocarbon molecules to have the chain length desired for the desired viscosity ranges. It also means there are no impurities, no paraffins or waxes left over as found in conventional oil. Less impurities means the oil doesn’t break down in your engine from self contamination. PAO basestock is more expensive to produce than conventional basestock (which are byproduct of producing fuel from crude)
The additive package is the portion of the oil that provides protection from corrosion, protection from metal to metal contact on starts, cleaners and detergents to keep your engine clean, and helps your oil stay thick as it gets hot (Viscosity Improvers). As you can imagine some of the additives are liquid gold when it comes to cost. It is quite easy to cut corners in this area and go really cheap. Quality oils have significant cost in this area. Going cheap on the additives has serious consequences to your engine protection.
With a premium basestock and a sweet additive package your motor oil should cost more but at the same time save you money. See a good oil package can run much longer in your engine while providing better protection the whole time. This means fewer oil changes and fewer purchases of oil… time and money. Some oils run as long as 35,000 miles without special bypass filtration.
You could be getting ripped of though. How the heck are we supposed to know what is actually in the bottle. I don’t know about you but I do not have a mass spectrometer at home to go discover what is really and what really isn’t in the oil. That is why I am making available the lab test results for all the top oils at the store.
Don’t get cheated! Don’t buy another drop of oil before you know what you are getting… read this synthetic motor oil report first.
