Here's another angle on the oil discussion. A few years back there was a lot of discussion about the best filters. Several different people put up their own expose' of various oil filters, and a common thread seemed to be to prove that Fram filters were inferior to most others. I'm pretty sure that links to some of these treatises were posted on this and other Mopar related lists. The filter investigations primarily consisted of cutting open various brands of filters and pronouncing quality based on visual observation of the amount of material, etc. It really made me question what I was doing, or rather which oils and filters I was using. However, Consumer Reports magazine did a scientific study on this very topic. Again, its been several years and I don't know which issue or even which year, but at that time I was subscribing to the mag and read the study myself.
Anyway, what CR did was contract with Yellow Cab in New York City to run an experiment with oils and filters on their fleet. If you've been in NYC, you know that would be a bunch of cars. Over a long term, CR serviced all the cabs, changing the oil and filters, using many different brands of each, then tore down the engines at various intervals and measured wear. They also ran some specific lab tests on oil filters determining what percentage of purposely introduced contaminants was picked up, and how much could be absorbed before the bypass opened.
The best performers were: synthetic oil--Mobil 1; dino oil--Castrol GTX; filter: Fram.
I've used Castrol GTX and Fram ever since.
Things may be logical and make sense, such as that 10-40 oil, having more additives than 10-30 oil, might have a problem because of the extra additives. I guess since I've used 10-40 on most of my vehicles since multi-vis became widely available, and haven't had any develop problems, I'm skeptical, but if there is evidence, I'd have to consider it.
Our real late model stuff, consisting of my '05 300c 5.7 and my wife's 09 PT Cruiser Ltd (2.4 turbo), specify 05-20 and 05-25 respectively, and I've been going with that since both are relatively low mileage vehicles. Otherwise I pretty much use 10-40 in cars trucks and motorcycles except 20-50 in the HD.
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