Re: Synthetic oil?

Posted by Tim Cole On 2013/9/14 9:41:22

If you coat one screwdriver with synthetic and another with regular oil and leave them on the bench for a week the one with synthetic will have a better film on it.

I was buying synthetic for my modern car at WalMart because it was on sale for less than regular oil at NAPA. But would this make much of a difference in a slow turning Packard? Well, I knew a Mobil oil executive who changed all his Packards to synthetic. Do I get better gas mileage on synthetic? I don't think so. With a Packard I would be more concerned about cleaning the oil pan, having the optional heavy duty air cleaner, and good ignition than synthetic oil.

But if you really want to be the expert, put your car on a dyno. If the rear wheel horsepower at 50mph is higher then you can tell everybody what's what so far as oil is concerned. Do I like running diesel oil in Packards? Not particularly because those long connecting rods benefit from thinner oil coming through the squirt holes. However, Packard authorized heavier oil to reduce consumption so there is nothing in the literature that says heavier oil will hurt the Packard motor. However, on the V-12 I have seen cavitation corrosion on oil pump gears in cars running 20w-50. They weren't original gears however.