What type of motor oil should I use

They're all a fairly standardized product I think. I usually grab Shell Rotella oil and for coolant I usually grab Mobil Delvac ELC-red.

 

My old man always ran Delo 400 15w-40 in everything he owned from his '78 KW 3406A Cat to his '07 KW ISX. Shop I work at uses 0w-40 Delvac. IMO if it meets the engine manufacturers specs and standards, you're pretty much just splitting hairs when comparing brands.

 

All of the major brands are good oils. One thing I have learned about motors and oil over the years, there is a lot of similarity between them and rifles and ammunition.

Example. I can purchase two different, well made .22 rifles. Each one top of the line. I can then buy a few well made brands of ammo for them. I take one of the ammo brands and shoot several rounds thru each rifle. They will usually print different patterns on target. One shooting better than the other. Now I take another brand of ammo and do the same thing. Now the one rifle that shot best with the first ammo now shoots worse with the second brand of ammo. Nothing wrong with the rifles or the ammo. Just that each rifle has a "preference" for a particular brand of ammo. One of life's little mysteries. Engines are the same way. One does good on Rotella, another does not. One does good on Delvac, another doesn't. And so on. Rotella, Delvac, Delo, Amsoil, Mystik, Kendall, Schaeffer, whatever, they are all good oils. Find one that delivers good results and stick with it.

I long since outgrew the conventional vs synthetic debates. Base oils have come so far in the last 15 years that the differences are more gray than black and white. I have grown partial to the synthetic blends. Best of both worlds and usually pretty cost effective. I get a syn blend delivered to my house for free along with free oil sample kits and analysis for under $18 a gallon. Kinda hard to beat that overall value anywhere.

 

Marvins miracle oil from Wal-Mart. It's by the fuel injector cleaner. That works better than Lucus. I put the bottle in my oil and my oil light quit flickering and my motor run smoother,

 

Most oils are to a certain spec.,some oils have different additives than others, I like chevron 15/40 year round and I DON'T switch brands,piston rings setto a particular oil with the mfg additives. I've changed brands before and oil consumption increased terribly for me.but that's me you may not notice this, here's my 2 cents, if you can find out what brand was used before in your engine, stick with it ,not so much the grade but the brand!

 

I would go to a local oil distribution facility and see what there house brand offers. Usually its a well known brand we have heard of, but will fail to realize that they produce oil for commercial trucks. My point is, I found a Synthetic Blend, ,Guardol ect distributed by unocal, Phillips 66 for 10.22 @ gallon in bulk. And soon as I turned the key, I noticed a difference. I have always been a firm believer to not change when something works right, in this case, I changed for better product and lesser price. How can one not be tempted.

 

I don't really like changing brands either, but I have changed grades within a brand. Like 15w40 and going to 10w30 and back, depending on time of year. Usually the additive package is strikingly similar between them within the same brand.

A good place to compare brands and grades of oil for what is in them is the Petroleum Quality Institute of America. They randomly grab up various oils and analyze them for what makes up their add pack, NOACK (burn off rate), etc. They don't list every oil that is on the market, that would be cost prohibitive to test everything. But they hit the more recognized stuff and some store brand names like Love's, Rural King, Ace Hardware, etc. Takes some time to wade thru their site, but worth the effort.

Here is the Phillips 66 Guardol 15w40 you are using Dave. I like seeing Moly or Titanium in motor oils. The are using a pretty good load of Titanium in this one. Nice load of calcium as well, great for detergency and acid control.

http://www.pqiamerica.com/June 2014/guardolect.htm