…
It’s a shame that we consumer’s have to fall victim to mandated fleet mpg averages just to get a .5 mpg increase by using an inferior design? Can someone tell me just how we’re helping the environment by junking and throwing away otherwise perfect cars? …
This drives me crazy, too. I call it “environmental theater.” Building disposable cars, vastly more complex, fragile, expensive, and resource-intensive, in ordder to get an extra .5mpg is an insanely bad trade-off.
Good update. Many are now discovering that an early oil change after initial use is a good idea. I would do another full oil change now and see if it takes longer than 1,800 miles to be down a qt. At a minimum, you can swap out the oil filter (cut it open and add pics) before the next oil change, but adding oil in between intervals won’t give you a good baseline.
IMO, this isn’t necessary. Like you, I’ve seen people do that – but not with any sound physical reasoning, mainly just to feel good, IMO. And it goes flatly against Valvoline’s advice, as well as the anecdotal evidence I’ve seen. My chemistry training is not petroleum chemistry, but at a basic level I understand and can follow the subject when it is explained professionally. My thinking/opinion:
Valvoline states plainly the OIL is the cleaner, not some secret-squirrel additive. And lab tests show that – they find nothing added to the VRP that is not in regular Valvoline – exact same additive package. What other oil cleans like this, then? Boutique esterified oils do (because they’re polar – like water is, or a AAA battery – different charge on each end). My suspicion/guess is they found a cheap way to synthetically (non-cracking) make a non-Ester, highly polar oil molecule (or maybe they found a vastly cheaper/easier way to make an ester oil). Finding a cheap ester oil substitute has been an industry goal since the 70s when sperm whale oil was banned as an additive. That would fit with their claims and the observed laboratory results. It also fits with my “garage lab” observations, that it’s highly polar – I noticed this when using it and comparing to other full syn Valvoline 30 I had on the shelf. I noticed a big difference in the feel of the base oil in the VRP vs. standard Valvoline synthetic, and compared it to ester oils I had on the shelf (Lubegard products – jojoba oil based vegetable esters). Very similar.
This will clean its full life cycle and won’t “load up” like detergent additives can – because the oil itself is the cleaner, not any small % component of it. The filter will take care of anything else. Filters have an ENORMOUS reserve carrying capacity most people don’t understand, there’s no risk of reducing flow or clogging them in any reasonable scenario.
Valvoline has said specifically there’s no need to prematurely change the oil or filter, and the physical reasoning behind a polar oil molecule being the working agent here supports that. Based on what I know/think I know, I understand and agree w/that.