Re: Cheating with synthetics?

[PM T2]

It may be only because I’ve been around so long, but I’ve seen about 800 forms of basically the same synthetic oil questions, and almost as many varieties of hopping about by the folks trying to answer it.

All I can suggest is that IF it is a true synthetic (i.e. Amsoil) then you are safe in reducing the quantity of oil used. Member Bill Salisbury did extensive testing (literally decades ago) using Amsoil in Elto Speedsters and Quads running at high (over 3000) RPM. He ran those motors as lean as 32:1 using Amsoil two-stroke oil and regular pump gas. His conclusions were that the motors were well protected at those ratios, and compression actually improved and top RPM increased as the hours of running time were logged and accumulated. He never experienced an engine failure or component breakdown running Amsoil at those ratios in genuine antique engines, so I’d have to suggest that you can cut your oil down some in a classic and it will be fine, provided it’s not a worn-out rattling hunk of junque to begin with. I’d be so bold to say that if you run a classic Evinrude or Johnson at 32:1 on pure synthetic oil and manage to blow it up, you had other problems that weren’t detected or fixed properly.

The last time I priced oils, the synthetics were about twice the cost of petroleum based oil. Since (if I recall correctly) you are being directed to use about "half" of the amount of oil with synthetics versus conventional TCW’s, the cost ends up being more or less a wash. To me, if you’re going to buy synthetic oil and continue to mix it at factory (heavy) ratios, then you’re sort of defeating part of the purpose of using a synthetic by doubling the cost of your oil supply.

If its a "synthetic blend", is this suggesting its a percentage of synthetic mixed with petroleum based oil? I guess you need to know that for sure.

FWIW I don’t bother with synthetics. in fact, I’m still working through a large stash of TCW2 oil, and it smokes like crazy compared to the TCW3. Part of the reason I like running these old things is to make smoke like they used to! getting rid of the smoke gets rid of half the fun.

Hope this helps.

Best,
T2

He's livin' in his own private Idaho..... I hope to go out quietly in my sleep, like my grand-dad did..... and not screaming, like the passengers in his car...