I've used dino Maxlife in the past on my other cars and had great success, but they just recently released the synthetic version and I was wondering if anyone had used it yet. It's almost $5/qt and I was wondering how it compared to Mobile One, Valvoline SynPower, ect...

 

I am not a fan of "extended life" oils, I prefer to use a quality oil with regular changes at 5k miles unless you are really beating on it, then I drop to 3500 miles. If you are going to push for those extended drain intervals, I would at least get a couple oil analysis' done to check for breakdown and fuel saturation...

 

If you have any existing oil seepage it will **** that synthetic stuff out. My dad works for an oil testing company and I have talked to a rep there who test oil and even he says you really dont need to change your oil until 6-8k, oil companies just set those 3k 5k intervals to make more money so you buy more.. my .02

 

Change frequency has as much to do with use as quality of oil. All short trips or racing and the oil will get fuel diluted, synthetics stand up to it better than dino but are not immune. That said most people can get away with 5K pretty easily even with "basic" oils.

As far as leaking the Maxlife being meant for 75K+ vehicles means it will tend to the thick end of the weight range, which if using a xw-30 in an LT1 that is a good thing. The high milage oils usually also contain some seal conditioners to soften up old hardened rubber and potentially stop or reduce leaks in doing so.

I do not have any specific feedback on this oil but am going to give it a shot. They had a free after rebate form on their website a while back I printed and plan to use.

 

I'm not sure about valvoline but I have always used mobil 1. My maxima has 207,000 miles on it and it runs just as good as it did the day I got it. I'm not sure about valvoline in camaros but in the maxima forum they say to stay away from any valvoline oil, royal purple, and castrol syntec blend cause they have a tendancy to break down faster compared to other oils. Like I said I'm new to the camaro so this probably doesn't apply to it since it is a completely different engine. I have 2 other friends with a 93 TA and a 94 z28 and they also use mobil 1 and love it. I have only been using it for about 2 years now and I have no complaints. It does it's job well.

 

WRONG
If it were a "regular" synthetic you would be correct. But this is "high mileage". Regular synthetic has no swelling agent. High mileage oils have a lot of it. Read below.

WRONG
High mileage uses the same base stock as its "regular" counter part. It is not a "weight" difference that gives it the high mileage capability. ie. 5W30 is 5W30. There is no way to make one 5W30 "thicker" than another. If it were, it would not be a 5W30.


CLOSE
A high mileage oil contains what all regular dino oils contain, but in a much higher concentration. That is a swelling agent. So what it does is swells up the seals to help prevent leaks. Any softening, if it occurs, is purely happen stance.

FYI, you will encounter from time to time a person that switches from conventional oil to synthetic late in the life of the engine. The engine then appears to spring leaks from everywhere. What that person did was to remove the oil that had a swelling agent in it and replace it with synthetic that has no swelling agent.

That is what JAZSUN was refering to. What I find odd is conventional oil has it in it, albeit a smaller amount. Standard synthetic does not have it and they introduce this "high mileage" synthetic at a premium price. We end up paying extra for something we should have gotten in the first place.

Reminds me of unleaded fuel when it came out in the 70's when Tetra-ethyl lead was added to fuel. They charged more for the fuel that didn't have to put the lead in.

Fing oil companies.

 

So in short, should I try it given my mileage? What you said abot dino oil having swelling agents in them and regular synthetic doesn't, make a lot of sense as to why it starts to leak and use oil after switching. That's why I'm afraid to switch unless I go with Maxlife syn. No other company has this type syn oil.

 

First of all, I don't understand what there is to be affraid of. If you switch and it leaks, switch back.

But even more perplexing is why you feel the need to switch. Todays oils are vastly superior to that made just 5 or 6 years ago. So even the most basic of oils can protect better than the oils made when our cars first came off the assembly line. So if you feel good with what you have been using in the past, stick with it. You won't gain anything by switching.

I have put 2 very old cars on max-life. Both had leaks from varying points. I was pleased with the results when the leaks subsided.

 

I have some first hand experience with the Valvoline Max Life Synthetic 5w30. My 94 Z28 got regular oil changes at around 5000 mile intervals with Mobil 1 5w30 for the first 115k miles. Then after reading about better wear results with slightly higher viscosity oils, I did a couple of oil change intervals with Mobil 1 0w40. The last 3 oil changes I switched to Max Life Synthetic 5w30 as it happens to be a slightly higher viscosity @ 100c than the Mobil 1 5w30 and slightly lower than the Mobil 1 0w40...

As for leaks... I had 2 small leaks before switching and I still have them... The front leak may be a little worse, but I have no reason to believe that it is getting worse because of the oil...

I get slightly better oil pressure when the engine is hot with the Max life Synthetic 5w30 then I did with the Mobil 1 5w30

The only other thing I will comment on is that at the end of the oil change interval, the Max Life Synthetic is a noticably darker color then either of the Mobil 1 weights were... This isn't necessarily a bad thing as it could be doing a better job of cleaning...

All of these oils will offer very good wear protection and most of us won't own our cars long enough for the motors to wear out due to the difference in protection qualities of the oils we use...

 

I run maxlife synthetic in the Bonneville. It's a n/a 3800 Series II with 125,000 miles on it. Ditto for the Regal, which is a first-gen 3800 with 160K.

The Z28 (52K) and the GN (30K) get Mobil 1 Synthetic.

 

A "30" weight oil can have a viscosity in the range of 9.30 - 12.49 centiStokes at 100degC. That's a pretty wide range, so it is very possible for one 30-weight oil to be "thicker" than another. Simply altering the additive package can change the viscosity of the oil.

http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/visc.html

When the lead is removed the octane dropped. It requires additional processing of the gasoline components to produce the characteristics required to achieve the required octane rating without lead additives.

But its always easier to blame the evil oil companies than to think things through.

 

I just tested synthetic Vs. older oils (non-synthetic, non-detergent oils--basically ****) for a research project At Central Michigan University. The comparison between the old oils and synthetics really is useless, but my prof. wanted to see drastic results. I personally wanted to do synthetic and just non synthetic.

I did however notice a slight difference in the synthetic oils, of the three I tested here is how they came out 1.Royal purple, 2.Valvoline synthetic, 3.mobil 1 synthetic.

Royal purple scaring on the test speciman was about 2/3's of what mobile 1 and valvoline did.


I never knew how important the zinc and phosporus content was in oil, expecially for solid roller engines.

I have all the data, but is pretty useless without pictures of the scaring, because all the synthetics passed all the weight i could add. And temp increases in basically linear in all cases.

 

Do you know what the freeways and cities would look like if we still had lead in our gas? You would have dark soot stuff all over. Basically lead all over the place from the amount of traffic we have today. They got rid of it, because along freeways they were finding the ground to be getting covered in lead basically. Not really the most healthy thing for us.

 

I use Valvoline Synthetic, not the maxlife though. It's all good stuff.

 

Nothing personal OK, but that's got to be the dumbest thing I have ever heard.