The big reason is that you can go with longer drain intervals and actually use less oil. The other thing is that mining oil from our planet is not very "green". I'd rather see some chemist develop a synthetic oil in a lab than open up protected land in Alaska to drill for more oil. BTW.. Doesn't everything cause cancer these days?
It's that sludge barrier that I spoke of earlier. Crude oil builds this sludge barrier that actually holds the oil in. Because the sludge barrier is keeping your car from leaking, the gaskets and seals get dried out. When you put a clean oil like synthetic in your car and wipe away the sludge barrier, you then expose those dried out gaskets and seals to fresh synthetic oil and that's where your leaks come from.
Yes. That's the break-in procedure that I follow. I will also limit the rpm that you run, though it's good to gradually rev it out a bit at times, so you don't end up with a dog. Heh.
I think it has more to do with the fact that the synthetic works better and Porsche probably worked out a nice deal with Mobil 1's marketing dept.
Even 3,000 miles has been considered a low interval for even crude oil. I think it was just a marketing move by Jiffy Lube to get you back sooner. I typically run between 3K and 5K miles, then do a oil filter change. The best thing is to just look at your oil occasionally. If it's brown, it's fine, if it's black or getting black, it's time to change it. What makes it black are the contaminates.
BTW.. I recommend a flush as well if you're going to changeover to synthetic. Mobil 1 doesn't mention anything about it, but Amsoil recommends and sells a flush. You add the can of flush to the oil before you change it and then let it run for 15-30 minutes to loosen all that junk up. Then you do the oil change.
What I used to do in the old days with crude oil was use about a half of quart of transmission (Dexron) fluid in the oil before dumping it. When the oil got about a half quart low, I'd top it off with the tranny fluid, run it for a day or so and then change the oil. That seemed to clean it out pretty well. I'm not going to recommend it though.
I heard of that and don't recommend it. The problem is the filtering system. Standard filters will just get clogged with that many miles on the oil. The synthetic is clean, but you can't help the contaminates in the gas and air that gets into the motor. Amsoil sells a special 2 filter system that uses an aux. filter to trap most of the contaminates and then a regular (Amsoil) filter to get the rest. I've heard of people running 25K mile intervals no problem with this setup. I certainly wouldn't try it with Mobil 1 and a Fram filter though.
You know.. That's what sort of bugs me about Mobil 1. I think it's a good product, but some of the things that they do or don't do are irresponsible. If you use synthetic and dump your oil every 3K miles, that's just pissing money away. OTOH, if you run 15k miles with a store bought Fram filter, you're going to be asking for trouble. Why doesn't Mobil 1 sell a upgraded filter? Also, why doesn't Mobil 1 offer a flush for when you want to convert your car that has been running crude oil to synthetic oil? In addition to being helpful, these things are also money makers, so I can't figure out why Mobil 1 doesn't offer anything like this.
Anyway..
Sal
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