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Lower our Dependency on Foreign Oil While Saving Money at the Pump

By: Robert Riley

If you watch or listen to the news, discussions happen frequently about the price of a barrel of oil and the cost of fuel at the fuel pump. The sale of large Sport utility vehicles have gone way down and manufacturers have been giving enormous rebates to manufacturers just to lose them. With costs of fuel skyrocketing, people are seeking other ways to conserve on fossil fuel such as buying little or mid-size Sport utility vehicles, smaller automobiles or Hybrids. When listening to the news, you may also find out about alternative fuels such as E85, Hydrogen or something else to diminish our dependency on foreign oil.

Crude oil is extracted from the earth and sent to refineries to manufacture our fossil fuel. The sludge that is left at the refinery is then used to generate oil to lubricate the insides of the power plants in our cars and trucks. Did you know that petrolium oil from the earth is full of impurities, paraffin's and waxes? Petrolium oil coming from the earth has millions of different kinds of molecules. Lots of these molecules are similar in weight but not in structure. Refining the oil does not clear out all of the complex impurities. The lubrication and performance qualities of refined petroleum are scarce. The refining process cannot tell the difference between such molecules, so a wide spectrum of molecules is existent in the finished lubricant made from crude oil. Many of the molecules from the crude oil contain paraffin (a wax-like substance harmful to your engine), which cause the lubrication to lump and flow very poorly in frigid temperatures. There is also sulfur, nitrogen and other bad elements in refined crude oil that cause the build up of sludge and varnish inside of an motor. The sludge and break down of molecules are what most notibly create wear and break down of the oil in your engine.

That same crude oil is also used to generate tar for the roads. Is that anything you want oiling your engine? The vehicle manufacturers and dealers seem to think so. That inexpensive petrolium oil guarantees profits all over the place. How is this possible? Manufacturers are pleased with the poor quality oil because it's just well enough to have an automobile to have passed the warranty period before major wear starts to be perceptible, such as your valve guides wearing out. That's when you see that puff of smoke when you first start your car in the morning once you have accumulate high mileage on it. Since conventional oil is loaded with all of these impurities and non-uniform molecules, it breaks down shortly and generates sludge and varnish; therefore you need to change it at around 3,000 miles. This is a great underlying reason to generate visitors at the dealership and the mechanic shop. The last thing the dealerships or garages that change oil want is a lengthy long-term oil or an oil that will drivetrain the age of an engine or transmission. Marc Graham, the president of Jiffy Lube, said in an article that if they could get their customers to shorten their drain interval by only 100 miles (changing the oil at 2,900 instead of 3,000 miles), that it would mean an extra $20 million dollars in revenue for the company each year. If they could have their customers to have one extra oil change per year, the corporation could make an additional $294 million. I hope you can be conscious of their motivation for the shortened intervals. It's in their agenda, not yours.

Here's your opportunity to participate in the movement to restrict the need for foreign oil dependency.

Not only can you reduce to the need on the importing of oil, you can also conserve at the pump while doing it. In addition, you can also dramatically extend the life of your engine and transmission, and that people, is certainly not on the census of the car and truck builders. The covert agenda of the auto manufacturers is to have your engine and transmission wear out after the warranty period so you can keep coming back to get additional cars and trucks. It is not in their best interest for any can or truck manufacturer or guy who fixes your car to tell you how to drivetrain the engine age of your vehicle. If they told you how to get your motor to persevere more, they would rescind their profit balance.

So how you can restrict the dependency on foreign oil?

That's simple. Stop purchasing widespread petroleum oil to lubricate your engine, transmission and axles. The next time you are due for an oil change, only get synthetic oil. And don't acquire the "blends" as they have all of those awful impurities that I just mentioned above by mixing synthetic with customary. Just acquire 100% synthetic. You don't want any additional impurities in your motor.

But synthetic oils are high-priced! That's the reason I have been buying conventional oil in the first place.

That is the biggest myth. If you use 100% synthetics in your entire drive train, synthetic oil can end up costing you nothing. How is that possible, you ask?

First let me make clear the benefits and then I will do the math. Fully synthetic oils are chemically engineered from perfect chemicals instead of from crude oil. Fully synthetic oils do not have that nasty sulfur, nitrogen and other elements that can cause sludge and varnish in your engine that traditional oils do. Fully synthetic oils also have a much higher flash point and can conduct much higher temperatures than conventional oil without breaking down. Since their resistance to break down is drastically reduced, they can be used for a lot longer time it takes than widespread oils. Fully synthetic oils stay much cleaner and last significantly longer than widespread oils. Unlike regular oils, fully synthetic oils have uniform molecules which ensure low friction as the lubricant layers slide across each other (which is what you want in your hot running mechanical engine.)

If they can land a space craft on the moon, can't they make an oil exceed 3,000 miles?
You bet they can and they do just that.

So what are the financial benefits of spending a little more money on a quart of oil?

For one, 100% fully synthetic oils can persevere up to 11 times more than petrolium oil depending on the vehicle, application and fossil fuel type. A small corporation called Amsoil is the only corporation that has such long-lived motor oils. The Amsoil corporation is the very first company in the U.S. to generate synthetic motor oil for passenger cars, years before Mobil 1, Havoline, Valvoline, Castrol or any of the other big-named corporations. Amsoil owns the trademark for the expression "First in Synthetics" because of this. The thing is that the majority people don't know is that Amsoil is the only corporation that delivers motor oil last up to an superior 1-year or 35,000 miles and has been doing this since 1972. This oil is guaranteed in writing.

If fully synthetic oils can last up to 11x longer and can underlyingly bar wear in your engine and transmission, then what are the advantages of using conventional oil?

Well, not a whole heck of a lot. Their initial low price gets folks to get them. Using it for engine break-in to help seat valves and other parts during the first several hundred miles. Other than that, it's certainly costing you a lot of cash to keep using petrolium oil. Look what happens to a transmission once you put high mileage on it while using traditional transmission fluid. You can end up spending $1,500, $2,000 or even more on remanufacturing a transmission on a passenger vehicle. If you would have had used a fully synthetic transmission fluid which resists heat and break down of molecules, you could potentially erase that ought for a transmission rebuild. For every 20 degrees above 175 degrees, your transmission age is Cut in half! When facing up to $2,000 on a repair bill, do you really want to risk that chance by sticking with old school crude oil?

Other savings of switching to synthetics are the gas mileage increase that the majority everyone notices. I will offer you an example in my own personal can or truck. I was initially getting 22 MPG on the expressway with my car with run-of-the-mill oils. I switched over my motor, transmission and rear differential over to Amsoil's synthetics. Afterwards, I realized a gain of 4 MPG Because of the reduced friction of the synthetics. I spent approximately $250 (including labor costs) to have all of my fluids changed over. That change over perseveres up to 1 year on the oil and several years for the other fluids. At the time of my tests, fuel was $3.19/gallon for premium that I was using. That equivalent $250 is close to what I would pay for a year's worth of oil changes at a quick lube for petrolium oil, but with conventional oil, I'd still be getting 22 MPG, not the 4 MPG increase from synthetics.

When driving 2,000 miles per month at 22 MPG, that comes out to 90 gallons of gas every month.
With the increase in fuel economy to 26 MPG, the equivalent 2,000 miles every month now only uses 76 gallons of fuel. That's $44 every month that I saved right there. $44 x 12 months = $535 per year in fossil fuel savings.

That's not too bad of an investment. Not only am I saving cash on the gas (in truth conserving extra at the pump than I spent for all of the oil, which basically composes the oil free when you do the math), I am also conserving on time because the oil changes persevere up to 1 year or 35,000 miles before I have to get them drained. Not to hint at the fact that I am cheating the manufacturers designed obsolescence of my vehicle. By using the 100% fully synthetics, my drive train will now persevere much more than what the manufacturer designed it to last for.

And to think that's just for me. Just think if I owned a company with a fleet of cars and trucks. How much cash would I save then? Our gov'ts could conserve millions of dollars if they sat down and ran the numbers in spreadsheets to figure savings over time. That's millions of dollars of our hard earned tax dollars being saved. Think of all of the police cars and utility cars and trucks that the governments currently use that could keep going for an extra few years before getting rid of them as extensive as their power plants ran like new (which they typically do when using synthetic oils in the drive trains.) Those long-term advantages and savings are not thought about when using petrolium oil.

Let's look at how much oil is saved on an yearly basis. If I had driven 1 year on 6 quarts of fully synthetic oil for 24,000 miles, if I would have done it the old way, I would have had to get 8 oil changes and use up 48 quarts of oil to travel the similar length. That's 48 quarts of oil imported from another country. By using the fully synthetic oil, I have saved the country 48 quarts of oil that I did not have to use for the year.

But how many folks drive 24,000 miles in a year? LOTS! With the mad prices of houses, people have been moving more distant out to the suburbs. Over 50% of the people are driving additional than 1 hour to get to work just to live in affordable housing. If the public stopped using conventional oil for their cars, the demand would go down and the price of fuel would most likely plummet. If prices of gas went down like mad, then the sales of big Suv's such as Hummers, Chevy Tahoe's and Ford Expeditions would probably dramatically increase.

About the author

Robert Riley is a programmer/analyst who comes from a family of auto mechanics who have owned a fleet of automobile service stations and quick lubes such as Enco, Texaco and Amoco since the early 1960's. The Riley family has as a history in working in automobile repair shops as far back as the early 1900's. For your next Oil Change be sure to only use synthetic oil.

Article Source: http://www.changingearth.org

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