Synthetic motor oil vs. conventional oil: which one is better for your car? The higher upfront cost of synthetic motor oil triggered this debate amongst car owners after synthetic motor oil came to the fore some forty years ago. The debate is still ongoing!
Car owners everywhere want to know if it’s worth spending a few extra bucks to make the switch from synthetic motor oil to conventional motor oil. If you ask the experts for their opinion on this, then most of them will single out synthetic motor oil as the go-to-oil for your car. Why is that?
Compared to conventional oil, synthetic motor oil ensures better protection of your car’s engine. Additionally, it helps to prolong the useful life of your engine by preventing the buildup of sludge and other impurities in it. The counter-argument to this that proponents of conventional oil give is that synthetic motor oil is not easily affordable to everyone.
While there may be some truth in this, the proponents of synthetic motor oil fail to consider that synthetic motor oil can actually save them a lot more money in the long term than conventional oil. How does a synthetic motor oil, such as Pennzoil synthetic motor oil, do that? We discuss that below.
The Advantages of Using Synthetic Motor Oil Over Conventional Oil
According to an AAA study conducted in 2017, synthetic motor oil ensures far greater protection for your engine than conventional oil. The study reveals that, on various engine oil tests, synthetic motor oil exceeded the performance of conventional oil by more than 40% on average.
There are several reasons why synthetic motor oil ensures better engine protection and overall performance than conventional oil. The first reason is the difference in how these two types of motor oil are produced.
Since it is extracted from crude oil that comes from the ground, conventional oil tends to have a lot of impurities that get transferred into your car’s engine. On the other hand, synthetic motor oil is carefully produced in the lab to ensure that it has the best properties of natural oil but is free from any impurities found naturally in crude oil. This prevents chemical buildup in your car’s engine, which improves its performance and prolongs its life.
Unlike the high-quality base oils used by synthetic motor oil, conventional oil uses less-refined base oils. As a result, conventional oil is more likely than synthetic motor oil to:
- Easily acidify and oxidize
- Be less chemically stable
- Lose protective qualities and break down faster
So, it’s clear that synthetic motor oil is specially formulated to ensure better engine performance and protection than conventional oil. However, if you’re still not convinced about using synthetic motor oil over conventional oil, then you may want to consider the following advantages that synthetic motor oil, such as Pennzoil synthetic motor oil, has over the latter.
1. It Provides Better Protection Against Engine Wear
The components of your car’s engine move at high speeds and in constant contact with each other. These components can wear and break down under extreme environments. The only thing that can protect against this is your car’s motor oil.
The ability of conventional oils to protect your engine against wear starts to diminish after it breaks down. On the other hand, synthetic oils can protect your engine against wear for a long longer. Synthetic can help to increase the life of your engine by over two hundred thousand miles on average due to just this quality.
2. Keeps Your Engine Cleaner
As conventional oil degrades, the impurities in the oil start to transfer into your car’s engine. This leaves behind harmful chemical deposits and sludge buildup. On the other hand, a synthetic motor oil, such as Pennzoil synthetic motor oil, is free from many of the impurities found in conventional oil since it is carefully produced in the lab.
As a result of this, minimal debris or other impurities collect in your engine over time when you use synthetic motor oil. Ultimately, this helps to protect your engine from wear, which prolongs its health, performance, and useful life.
3. Ensure Better Protection at Extreme Temperatures
Synthetic motor oil has been formulated in a way to allow it to flow quickly at low temperatures. So, by using synthetic motor oil, you can almost assure that your car will not have starting problems in the colder months. On the other hand, synthetic oil will make sure that your engine does not have to work too hard in hot climates to keep your car on the road. This is something that engine’s that run on conventional oil needs to do.
Who Wins?
Can you think of one good reason to choose synthetic motor oil over conventional motor oil? You can’t, So, synthetic motor oil wins—on all counts.