Wilkinsons oil

yes the more often the better

I use Smith & Allan 10w40 semi-synthetic in all my vehicles 'cos It's only around £47 delivered for 20L. They advertise on fleabay and are independent oil blenders. The vehicles it goes in are:-

The 2.5TD LR - changed yearly (approx 3000 miles)
Honda Pan Euro ST1100 bike - changed every 2-3 months (approx 3000 miles)
Rover 75 2.0TD estate - changed yearly (approx 7000miles)
My daughter's Renault Clio - changed yearly (approx 8000miles)
My son's Fiesta - changed yearly (approx 3000 miles)

I know there's a difference in the mileages, but the yearly changes are just for convenience and the bike is changed more often, 'cos the wet clutch will destroy engine oil pretty quickly.

In all vehicles, the oil exceeds the manufacturer's spec. I always think that changing oil and filters regularly is the most important thing, not the brand of oil you buy. As long as it's from a kosher source and manufacturer and meets the engine manufacturer's spec, it'll be fine.

If Wilkinson's oil or Tesco's or Asda's or any other major supermarkets were complete ****e, they wouldn't be selling it.

I'm certain that much of the talk around oils (as with many other things) is marketing bollocks just to part you from your hard earned. I know with my bike, it'll cost £10-20 quid more for a can of oil with a pretty picture of a bike on it. A guy in a bike shop once told me not to use car oil in my bike as it "contains anti-friction additives and is no good for the wet clutch"
Strange, as I thought oil was meant to be an anti-friction additive! it'd be a bit crap if it wasn't.

Oils contain friction modifiers to make them 'more slippy' Yes i know that sounds stupid but its true I have analysed many oils from Halfords own brands to Castrol, Mobil and Fuchs including race oils and they are certainly not all the same. However pretty much all of them would appear to be upto the job especially when being changed at such short intervals. I once did 13k miles in a tuned Nissan 200sx (300bhp) including a full trackday and when i analysed a sample of the drain oil it still had plenty of life in it. doing 3000 mile oil changes are a complete waste of money but people cant get that into their heads and just mutter 'better safe than sorry' all the time.

We test engines are work (Ford Puma engines so 2.2, 2.4 and 3,2 diesel) and sometimes run them 500hrs between oil changes. Now even if you spend those 500hrs doing 30mph that still equates to at least 15k miles. I dont think people realise how good a modern engine oil actually is and think just because its gone black its needs changing

I must admit tusky,
my other hat was cabbing, mostly weekends, but done it full time for two years - so?
I changed my oil every 5000, then filters & oil every 10000.
easy to workout, just by looking at the 2 intervals on the hard worked speedo.
I used Fords for cabs, but the hardest worked was a G reg mk 2 1800 auto sierra petrol.
purchased @ 2 year old ex lease, done the first 100.000
then the next 100.000
then was used until it was given over to the mrs for five years.
Still a clean rust free solid car when we sold It 8 years later,
with what appeard to be 60.000 miles on the clock.
(260.000 miles in reality)
Never smoked, rattled or let us down, (hydrolic lifters) (usa built engine I think?)
never used much oil, nor dropped any.
never had the rocker cover off, only rebuilt the pierburg carb once.
Had just one new cambelt in its time we owned it!
the oil of choice was Castrol GTX....

Over 10 years ago we sold it, but I still look fondly at old 1800 auto sierras...lol

I then progressed to diesel mondeos,
again 2 yr old ex lease, started to do the same thing at milage intervalls,
well my daughter wrote that first one off (thanks love!)
then another was driven down the side by a "furrener @ Moby Dick/A12 lights"
so in the end I gave up the cabbing - dont miss the hassel now - but...
Oils and milage, go ask hard working cabbies about it at Intercab in Basildon...lol

Tuskenraider said:

Oils contain friction modifiers to make them 'more slippy' Yes i know that sounds stupid but its true I have analysed many oils from Halfords own brands to Castrol, Mobil and Fuchs including race oils and they are certainly not all the same. However pretty much all of them would appear to be upto the job especially when being changed at such short intervals. I once did 13k miles in a tuned Nissan 200sx (300bhp) including a full trackday and when i analysed a sample of the drain oil it still had plenty of life in it. doing 3000 mile oil changes are a complete waste of money but people cant get that into their heads and just mutter 'better safe than sorry' all the time.

We test engines are work (Ford Puma engines so 2.2, 2.4 and 3,2 diesel) and sometimes run them 500hrs between oil changes. Now even if you spend those 500hrs doing 30mph that still equates to at least 15k miles. I dont think people realise how good a modern engine oil actually is and think just because its gone black its needs changing

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I'm certainly not implying that all oils are the same, what I meant was that if the oil meets or exceeds the spec then it's perfectly good for that engine. If one oil is much "better" than another, how many people will change the service interval to suit?

As I said, the yearly changes I do on the cars are for convenience only, it's just easier than precisely monitoring mileages and condition of use etc. The bike is particularly unkind to oil and you can feel through the clutch when it needs changing ( it starts to get a bit ratchety and sticky ), therefore I change it more regularly. Honda's recommended service interval is actually only 4,000 miles anyway.

I would change oil every 12 months regardless of mileage due to the acids out of the combustion cycle being absorbed by the oil.

Tuskenraider said:

Waste of time IMO, anything bigger than a grain of sand will be picked up by the filter. You get magnetic gearbox plugs because they dont have a filter so if you needed one on the engine you would have one.

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It takes 30 seconds to do and causes no harm. It will pick anything up before it gets to the oil filter. Also you can get magnetic sump plugs. Mine has been on 2 years now and not fell off once and i green lane and pay & play every weekend

Everyone has there little way of doing things that work for them.

gil said:

It takes 30 seconds to do and causes no harm. It will pick anything up before it gets to the oil filter. Also you can get magnetic sump plugs. Mine has been on 2 years now and not fell off once and i green lane and pay & play every weekend

Everyone has there little way of doing things that work for them.

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the proof in the pudding would be to drop the sump and observe the clump of particles!

If you have anything on it then you have more serious issues to worry about I had a magnetic sump plug on my 200sx that the previous owner had fitted and every service it had fook all on it

Yer it wont do any harm, just cant see the point. Its just like these magnets they sell to clip on your fuel hoses to improve MPG lol

Tuskenraider said:

If you have anything on it then you have more serious issues to worry about I had a magnetic sump plug on my 200sx that the previous owner had fitted and every service it had fook all on it

Yer it wont do any harm, just cant see the point. Its just like these magnets they sell to clip on your fuel hoses to improve MPG lol

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indeed i fitted a set of spoon sump plugs to my civic, both engine and box.

engine was always clear, box had a tidy amount gathered on it.

that reminds me, i think i need a magnet on my gearbox more than engine, cos that definitely has particles in the oil!

transfer case has one from factory iirc.

cheers!

Mr Noisy - might that be because your engine has a filter and your gearbox doesn't?

I accept that on many engines 3000 mile changes are excessive, but regardless of how good the oil is it still has a finite usability and I'd much rather change it 20% too early than 5% too late....
Tuskenraider, when you say you change oil every 12 months regardless of miles do you mean ONLY every 12 months or AT LEAST every 12 months? eg a 3000 mile engine at 12 months will have acids in it, as will a 30,000 mile engine but would you leave an engine for 30,000 miles or change it before the 12 months is up?

I see your point about not doing something that won't obviously have a benefit but I'm not sure the analogy of comparing a sump magnet to a fuel line magnet holds true - IF an oil filter is full, or the bypass sticks then the magnet will help contain any ferrous particles. A fuel line magnet is just snake oil.

Personally I don't like the idea of a magnet stuck to the underside of the sump -how do you then remove the particles it has caught without removing the sump? They aren't going to all come out when you drain the oil, partly due to surface tension, but more because they'll have been magnetised and will stick to the inside of the sump. If you're going to have a magnet, for me it has to be attached to the sump plug

sump plug magnet is the best idea but probably not as necessary in an engine than a gearbox, although it cetainly cant harm.

i just did an oil change on the v8 last night, i aim to change every 6 months, thats probably around a 1000 miles or so! but, when i do drop the oil it reeks of petrol, obviously the oil in this engine has a pretty hard time.

it stays clear for around a 250 miles or so then starts to darken on the dipstick. remember it is straight mineral that i use so it does darken more than a synthetic.

i changed last night because the oil had just started to take the 'gone past a nice brown' shade and as i say i reckon there was lots of fuel deposits in it from the smell, plus it was just about time, the last change was sometime july/august.

i can handle changing it every six months, would do it more often but its wasteful.

valid point regards the engine oil filter of course though ste, it would do more work than a magnet i think.

cheers

sidewaysste said:

Tuskenraider, when you say you change oil every 12 months regardless of miles do you mean ONLY every 12 months or AT LEAST every 12 months? eg a 3000 mile engine at 12 months will have acids in it, as will a 30,000 mile engine but would you leave an engine for 30,000 miles or change it before the 12 months is up?

IF an oil filter is full, or the bypass sticks then the magnet will help contain any ferrous particles.

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I meant I would change the oil at 12 months even if the mileage was low. i.e I wouldnt wait till i had got to 6000 miles if I was only doing 3k a year. Obviously if you are doing 30k a year you would change it more ofter than every 12 months.

You would have to leave an oil filter on for a VERY long while to fill it.

Tuskenraider said:

I meant I would change the oil at 12 months even if the mileage was low. i.e I wouldnt wait till i had got to 6000 miles if I was only doing 3k a year. Obviously if you are doing 30k a year you would change it more ofter than every 12 months.

You would have to leave an oil filter on for a VERY long while to fill it.

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That's what I thought you meant