Oil

[MLW]

Bought 5 litres of Asda's 5w-30 fully synthetic SN spec oil today for £14. It is on a big discount at the moment. Looks good.

[Tinonline]

What!  

(Spills tea and cup & saucer fall to the shagpile).

You mean you have not bought the OE oil from Lexus? That unctuous, gossamer liquid strained through the under garments of a 1000 vestal virgins?  

Half the forum won't speak to you now.

Wonder who makes Asdas stuff...

 

[keybasher2]

Quote

 

Reminds me of the motorbike quote "if you have a thirty bob head buy a thirty bob helmet"

[Tinonline]

Yep I use Opie Oils for engine oil. Shell Helix which is what UK Lexus use.

diff oil any solid brand to spec but I confess Lexus gearbox oil which is not outrageously expensive.

[Tinonline]

2 hours ago, piasek said:

I wouldn't use any supermarket or eBay oil in my car. Most of the time I use OpieOils as they have specification of nearly all oils they sell. I just bough Mobil 1 ESP to my LS430 which does have much better specification than Castrol used by Lexus dealer.

Ah interesting. Lexus dealers are franchises in effect or distributors so as long as they follow key guidelines they will source as preferred.

Castrol is, from my experience, excellent.

[MLW]

Everyone uses the oil they feel comfortable with. Over the last 20 years I have always focused on the spec on the can. This has included French supermarket oil, Comma oil, and Tesco's oil (all of which are very good).

My old Mercedes W124 has 148k on it and was fantastic, like new.  My plan is to use this oil, or Euro Car Parts oil plus a Mann oil filter every 5,000 miles and I think that silky smooth engine will stay.....silky smooth.

This oil is SN standard and meets some of the top BMW and Mercedes specs you can get. Seems good to me as the Lexus manual in 2002 states use SL oil standard.

[MLW]

Now here is an interesting fact or two.

Asda 5w-30 fully synthetic = API SN/CF, ACEA C3, BMW LL-04, MB229.31/229.51.

Mobil 1 ESP Formula 5W-30 has the following builder approvals =  ACEA C2, C3
API (Meets Engine Test Requirements) SM / SN. BMW Longlife 04, MB-Approval 229.31
MB-Approval 229.51

[Malc]

.....  I doubt ASDA, a subsidiary of one of the biggest conglomerates on this planet, the USA Walmart, would be selling anything that's not totally fit for purpose !

But what would I know 

Malc

[Titch LS]

I'm sure as Asda don't produce it, and it meets all the specs, it will be absolutely fine in the engine of an LS. Asda buy in huge bulk and pass on the saving. Shell, Mobil, etc., don't.

[Cotswold Pete]

I always find oil a bit confusing in terms of will one manufacturer over another do more harm or more good. 

Found this link interesting, and written in a style I could get my head around. http://www.carbibles.com/engineoil_bible.html

What I find interesting is the the LS temp gauge never budges once the engine is warm, no matter in a queue on a hot day or pottle-ing about the country lanes, so I assume the LS being well engineered does not suffer as much from extremes you get in a Ford Focus RS on a night out in some car park.  Also as the LS has turbo no components there is none of that high RPM stuff going on (and subsequent lubrication stress) so the oil just gets a nicer life in (I assume) the lazy LS.

My LS at 170,000+ barely uses oil between it's service intervals (and about 10,000 miles) and, but I have been know to top up with half a litre of Halford semi-synthetic (10/40 I recall).

I also never buy oil or such like from eBay, just in case, I am sure most sellers are fine, but (to quote keybasher2) I have a 30 bob head, so a 25 bob eBay helmet is a step not worth trying.

[MLW]

A very good web site. As oil is often seen as the 'blood of the engine' it is little wonder that each driver has a view. Mine is a simple one of reading the spec in close detail and going with that. Interestingly, in the USA oil is very cheap, because it is basically a homogeneous product that probably varies little, within the spec. It is also subject to huge economies of scale. i.e. it is very cheap to make given the huge volumes produced.

I also agree that the LS seems to be an unstressed engine, so any good quality oil will be great. My next 5,000 mile oil change, yes, 5,000 mile oil change, is so cheap, will cost £20 with a Mann filter. Looks good to me.

[Tinonline]

I'm attempting to get an article to post from Car Mechanics October edition on replacement parts quality. It covers numerous parts, the law, implications and grey areas...some quality oil blenders for example could but don't bother to apply for some compliance standards because of the cost...yet their product is excellent. If we fit substandard parts...we are liable. Worth buying as a reference document. Fascinating reading and yes, Brexit has an impact too.

[Verbout]

On 4 October 2016 at 6:31 PM, piasek said:

I wouldn't use any supermarket or eBay oil in my car. Most of the time I use OpieOils as they have specification of nearly all oils they sell. I just bough Mobil 1 ESP to my LS430 which does have much better specification than Castrol used by Lexus dealer.

What's wrong with the above oils, you do know the spec of the oil needed for your car I assume? and that it's written on the oil can for you to compare.

rotflmao

[Cotswold Pete]

10 hours ago, Tinonline said:

I'm attempting to get an article to post from Car Mechanics October edition on replacement parts quality. It covers numerous parts, the law, implications and grey areas...some quality oil blenders for example could but don't bother to apply for some compliance standards because of the cost...yet their product is excellent. If we fit substandard parts...we are liable. Worth buying as a reference document. Fascinating reading and yes, Brexit has an impact too.

I find the whole compliance thing interesting.  In theory a good idea to know what whatever your buying is of a certain standard.

However my experience of seeing the rise of compliance since the mid 80's is that it seems to allow decision makers not to actually apply good old 'fit for purpose review'.  They just want to see a compliance document, so if it all goes t*ts up they can blame someone else.

A decade ago I tried selling engine oil by-pass filters, fitted a number to coaches, diesel cars, etc, and the owners were blown away with 15% fuel savings, but when I went to talk to bigger boys they wanted to know where my compliance document was (never mind the heaps of evidence I had from Sheffield University - and a fair few references.  I did not have the money to go get Mira to lab test it, yet a colleague in South Africa got some local compliance testing done, and job done.  Was that good enough for the UK, was it heck, so I decided to not bother saving lots of money for UK truck owners (could have saved the Post Office around £4-£6M a year on fuel, but I guess they need that bit of paper).

Be interesting to see what Brexit impact is, but given it was the Brits that really took the idea of modern standards and compliance to the rest of the world, we only have ourselves to blame!

C'est la vie.

 

[MLW]

Very true. Each to there own. In my case if it meets the standard, it meets the standard. That seems simple to me.

As it is on a 2002 car the standard has risen by so much, it easily exceeds the SL (now SN standard) that was specified at the time by Lexus.