is there any difference between cheap ECP own brand vs castrol, mobile1, petronas etc

daltonss

Bigjil as long as it meets manufacturer approved spec what does it matter what oil brand u use?
Castrol n Mobil charge more because of the money they spend on sponsors, advertising and marketing. Just like fancy designer clothes, tyres and car brands like Ferrari. You pay for the name

bigjl

londonTiger wrote: »

Something to bear in mind, in the 80's and 90's it was the engine that died first. Nowadays the engine is the last piece to fail. Ususally clutch, gearbox, turbo etc will go once or twice before the engine goes, most of the time the engine never even dies before the car is scrapped - the market value of the car reaches sub £1000 that the car is scrapped when a major repair/service such as a timing belt or clutch is due.

My view would be different if the car I was driving was an affinity car or was a model with timing chain and turbo that needed to use oil that would not gunk up.

Who told you that?

I have never had to replace an engine on a car. Apart from one occasion where I drove a mk3 Escort back from Scotland flat out overnight and when I tried to start it the next day it was seized solid,
I had never serviced it and topped it up with the cheap recycled oil you used to see at Motor Factors.

I got a bit more educated as far as maintenance goes over the years, I suspect most people have a tendency to not realise the value of proper maintenance when they are in their early 20's and instead spend more attention to things like Alloys and Stereos. Certainly in my day.

Rust was the big killer of cars back in the 70/80/90's ask anybody that owned a Strada that failed its first MOT due to chassis rot or the same of a Lancia owner.

Rust was not just a problem for the Italian marques as most cars would rust badly to some extent.

The only place I have heard about engines out living the rest of the car is in the internet.

A car lasts as long as it is well maintained.

It is no more complicated than that.

Car Mechanics Mag has a couple of projects on the go at the moment.

One is a Mini that had the engine killed due to chronic poor maintenance of the cooling system and the other is a Ka that had loads of rust and which is now probably going to last for years now it has been treated to some repairs and preventative maintenance.

bigjl

daltonss wrote: »

Bigjil as long as it meets manufacturer approved spec what does it matter what oil brand u use?
Castrol n Mobil charge more because of the money they spend on sponsors, advertising and marketing. Just like fancy designer clothes, tyres and car brands like Ferrari. You pay for the name

I am not really interested in your Google based opinions Dark Matter.

You need to grow up and form opinions based on facts rather than the Internet.

As usual you are over simplifying things.

To only consider ACEA specs is missing the entire picture

As a quick example some A3/B3/B4 5w40 oils meet Porsche A40 specifications, but not all do.

My parents never had their cars serviced unless at the Main dealer or at one trusted local Garage and my dad never allowed anything other than OE spec oil to be use, he only ever replaced tyres in axle sets with the same tyre as fitted new (which I considered overkill to be fair)

In my lifetime he only bought one used vehicle but surprisingly never had any mechanical problems with any vehicle other than starting problems with a Fiat 131, a Viva clutch and a rust repair was needed to the front subframe on his 305, though it was 6 years old at the time.

I am sure that eventually Dark Matter you will learn more about cars, perhaps when you are old enough to have a real one rather than a virtual one in Forza or Gran Turismo (not sure if you have a PlayStation or Xbox)

forgotmyname

bigjl wrote: »

Who told you that?

I have never had to replace an engine on a car. Apart from one occasion where I drove a mk3 Escort back from Scotland flat out overnight and when I tried to start it the next day it was seized solid,
I had never serviced it and topped it up with the cheap recycled oil you used to see at Motor Factors.

See what a difference good oil makes, I drove back from Dover at 4am with my foot buried to the floor in a 1300cc Metro, Off the top of the speedo and off the top of the rev counter.
No lasting damage, the engine was fine but the gearbox did fall to pieces 2 years later.

bigjl

Metro gearboxes where designed with that fail safe facility to stop you going to far in them....

I never did fix that Escort, maybe if I had spent as much on oil as I did on the XR3 cloverleafs, XR3 laser fabric seats and Spax springs it might not have broken!

londonTiger

bigjl wrote: »

I am not really interested in your Google based opinions Dark Matter.

You need to grow up and form opinions based on facts rather than the Internet.

As usual you are over simplifying things.

To only consider ACEA specs is missing the entire picture

As a quick example some A3/B3/B4 5w40 oils meet Porsche A40 specifications, but not all do.

My parents never had their cars serviced unless at the Main dealer or at one trusted local Garage and my dad never allowed anything other than OE spec oil to be use, he only ever replaced tyres in axle sets with the same tyre as fitted new (which I considered overkill to be fair)

In my lifetime he only bought one used vehicle but surprisingly never had any mechanical problems with any vehicle other than starting problems with a Fiat 131, a Viva clutch and a rust repair was needed to the front subframe on his 305, though it was 6 years old at the time.

I am sure that eventually Dark Matter you will learn more about cars, perhaps when you are old enough to have a real one rather than a virtual one in Forza or Gran Turismo (not sure if you have a PlayStation or Xbox)

But OE oil is inferior to branded stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW227-Bj4wQ

It's a bit of a dumb experiment though because oil will never cook like that inside the car, the oil is always recirculating so it gets to cool down in the sump before it is sucked in back to the block.

Perhaps castrol have a case to make for racing cars - but it's completely wasted on a runabout car - just like premium petrol is wasted on a runabout car.

daltonss

Bigjil so what you're saying is that the designer brands like castrol edge and mobil are better than triple qx?

molerat

I am not a brand snob but currently have a bottle of Magnatec in the boot - mainly because it is difficult to get any other brand in Ford M2C948-B spec and it is the genuine Ford oil, they sell it in Ford logo'd Magnatec bottles (and Tesco were selling it cheaper than Halfords own brand)

I got used to using a lot of the brands you now see in car oils when working on aircraft - oil was bought according to spec and not brand - never seemed to cause any problems there - it was good enough for mach 1+ aircraft so I should imagine they can make a satisfactory car oil.

One thing that did concern me a little whilst looking for some oil was this http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/gb/groceries/sainsburys-5w30-fully-synthetic-ford-oil-2l
look at the country of origin !

forgotmyname

Just get some Castrol R in there. Lovely smell.

A._Badger

londonTiger wrote: »

But OE oil is inferior to branded stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW227-Bj4wQ

.

I'm quite confident that Mercedes own brand oil (which is made by Fuchs) is more than good enough, just as I am convinced that the GM oil I used in previous cars (on the recommendation of mechanics I trusted) was also more than adequate for the applications at hand.