Uncommon Cents

One of the most incredible areas of technological advances has been in motor vehicles. Less than two hundred years ago there were no cars or trucks or busses and today today I can’t go 100 feet without seeing one.

One of the great advances in motor vehicle technology that can save tremendous amounts of money is synthetic motor oil, yet not too many people use it. Synthetic motor oil can cost the same or even less than conventional motor oil (I got some on sale for a dollar a quart recently), require changing much less frequently (I change my oil every 20,000 miles, although I still change the oil filter every 3,000 miles), and have measurably better viscosity performance–synthetic oil is just plain better at lubricating your engine. If nothing else, spending $5 on oil for 20,000 miles sounds a heckuva lot better to me than spending $33.33 for oil changes over the same amount of miles–and that’s if I do the labor myself.

Fewer oil changes means less waste (and as you all know, I hate waste), and it appears to me (although there is, as always, controversy on any subject) that synthetic oil use can substantially increase the life of your engine, which is the big potential payoff. I’ve been using it in my Toyota Tacoma (over 80,000 miles) since my first oil change at 3,000 miles and the oil looks sludge free and clean–and that’s at 17,000 miles.

So consider synthetic oil the next time you do an oil change–20,000 miles vs. 3,000 miles, and careful shopping can bring the costs to about equal up front… so a per mile cost of six times less, and potentially far longer engine life, made switching easy for me.

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