Oil Brands

steinooo

steinooo

steinooo

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Stoke on Trent
Hi all,

I walked into my local car parts shop today to have a look how much Castrol GTX oil is which is what I normally put in my Micra. It's £15 for 5l of 10w40 Castrol GTX, or £22 for 5l of Castrol GTX Magnatec.

The shopkeeper saw me looking at the oil and asked me what car I was putting the oil in, when I told him that my car is a 94 Micra; he said he'd recommend GM oil, (General Motors) which is semi synthetic based, like GTX Magnatec i believe, and that the spec of the GM oil was arguably better than the Castrol offerings. Here's the thing though - the GM oil was half the price at only £8 for 5l of 10w40!

What do people think about what oil brands are best? I've always thought Castrol GTX oil to be the best, maybe I should think about saving myself a packet and trying GM oil in my car!
 
I work in a motorfactors myself and we sell loads of GM 10w40, quite a few garages use it, probably because its fairly cheap. We buy it directly from a vauxhall dealership for around £4+VAT for 5litres.

A 10w30 is recommended for a k11 Micra.
 
Supposedly there's more too it than just the viscosity rating... the following is copied from a guy who copied it from someone else (not first hand info) but is interesting.

I read it on a discussion on oil brands on the Mondeo owners website (recommended Oil for Mondeos with a petrol zetec or duratec engine is 5w-30)

Personally I would steer clear of Ford oil because as said above it's an economy oil, read the piece below produced by a knowledgeable guy in the oil business who posts on the RS site:

I had a long discussion recently with the tecnical guys from a large oil company about Ford Spec 5w-30 oils.

These oils are fuel economy oils normally meeting FORD WSS-M2C913A/B.

The standard (cheaper) oils are always ACEA A1 which are designed to shear in use (lose viscosity) which is fine for a normal unmodded road car.

The problem is, if your car is modded or driven hard, these oils become very thin within 5000 miles!

I have been strongly recommended to advise people that if your car is not a stock road car then you should not use these oils.

In this case you should use a 5w-30 which carries ACEA A3 or A5 as these oils are superior quality and do not shear (lose viscosity) as easily in service.

The consequence of not doing this is severely shortened engine life!

ACEA SPECS

A1 Fuel economy petrol
A2 Standard performance level
A3 High performance and/or extended drain
A4 Reserved for future use in certain direct injection engines
A5 Combines A1 fuel economy with A3 performance

Just thought this would be of interest.
Click to expand...
source : http://fordmondeo.org/forum/showtopic.php?tid/710071/



edited to add that it sounds like for a standard car which isn't driven particularly hard a budget oil should be fine.
 
moss said:
I work in a motorfactors myself and we sell loads of GM 10w40, quite a few garages use it, probably because its fairly cheap. We buy it directly from a vauxhall dealership for around £4+VAT for 5litres.

A 10w30 is recommended for a k11 Micra.
Click to expand...

I think i might just give this GM stuff a go, 10w30 for my K11? :eek: I've always been told 10w40 - what is the differece please moss?! *is worried*
 
I wouldnt worry too much, 10w40 will be fine, 10w30 is just what Nissan recommended. I always used 10w30 in mine.
 
Chronos-X said:
About a tenner for a huge bottle :p
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For standard 10w40 mineral oil?
Most motorfactors will be able to beat halfords on price on just about every item they sell.
 
We had a 215 litre barrel of 10w40 mineral (iirc) oil at work from Vauxhall a while ago. Seemed like good stuff. We normally just have a 215 litre (or 45 gallon) barrel of oil from the local factors. To be honest IMO it's all "very much of a muchness" when it comes to oil. With Castrol you're very much paying for the name, like with everything. We tend to put this "standard" 10w40 oil in nearly all the motors we have in at work for services and such, unless it's specifically stated that the car must have synthetic or whatever. In the 35+ years of business my dads been in he's never once had someone (regular customer or otherwise) come back saying that the wrong oil was put in leading to an engine problem. :)
 
tb2000 said:
In the 35+ years of business my dads been in he's never once had someone (regular customer or otherwise) come back saying that the wrong oil was put in leading to an engine problem. :)
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Probably because the damage that can be caused by a poor oil isn't easily seen, and doesn't instantly cause a problem. Also, it's very difficult to pinpoint an engine problem back to the oil so is it any wonder?

Personally, I'll always take my own parts to a garage if I'm not working on the car myself so I know the right bits and fluids are being used rather than whatever's on the shelf at the garage that was going cheap at the time...
 
Makro do offers on Magnatec £15 + VAT for 5 litres, + 1 Litre free..

For the new Zaf, I use the GM Fully synthetic 5/40 as spec'd in the manual, I did look around on the forums to see if there was any better, but people just point to the GM stuff.. but £22 for 5 Litres, considering it's regarded as high quality, it seems a bargain..

I personally wouldn't splash out on 0/40 Mobil fully synth unless it was recommended by the manufacturer, or you have absolute knowledge that using 0/40 in place of the recommended oil is benefitting the longevity of the engine.. however you know it's good quality..
 
Lowe said:
Probably because the damage that can be caused by a poor oil isn't easily seen, and doesn't instantly cause a problem. Also, it's very difficult to pinpoint an engine problem back to the oil so is it any wonder?
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It's not poor oil like the cheap cack you get in halfords or whatever, it's good quality stuff, that I can assure you :). But anyway, I can understand what you're getting at but let me put it to you this way: Through the 35+ years the business has had many many regular customers (business customers and private) who owned fleets of cars, vans and such from new and of which do (did) many thousands of miles a year. They came to my dads firm from day one for servicing (and all other work) and at the end of their lives (or when they were sold) many of them had 200,000+ thousand miles on them, with engines all still in good order. For example, we have a regular customer who does astronomical mileage a week (so much so that the brand new 04 Nissan Van he bought now has over 150,000 miles on it!). He has the thing serviced every 5000 miles or so (he's on his third cambelt), and at every service the oil comes out and still looks clean. On the other hand the best thing you can do with a diesel even if you do nothing else is to change the oil and filter every 5000 miles or so.

Lowe said:
Personally, I'll always take my own parts to a garage if I'm not working on the car myself so I know the right bits and fluids are being used rather than whatever's on the shelf at the garage that was going cheap at the time...
Click to expand...
I can see your point, but you'll find that many of the parts that you get from factors are made by the same companies as what supply the "original" parts to the manufacturers and main dealers. For example we fit Gates cambelts as a rule who also make the original equipment belts for the manufacturers (although not all of them). It's no different from the way that people pay more for something just as it's got a name on it. In fact, sometimes you find an original part is cheaper from the manufacturer than the factors. A while ago we had to put a clutch cable in a Clio, which was cheaper from Renault than the factors. :D
 
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