Re: Follow up to difference in Quicksilver high performance and premium gear lube.
not all synthetic oils are created equally - not even full sytnthetics are based on the same chemistry. Synthetic just means it was made by us and not in the ground. Amsoil and some other synthetics are based on polyalkylene oxides - not pure hydrocarbon. (and yes these can take on a huge amount of water compared to others and remain effective, 10% is a reasonable number!)
The answer to "can I mis synthetic and natural based oil?" is: It depends!
Also when mixing oils of any type, don't forget that they all have some degree of additive package including detergents, buffers, rheology modifiers, polymers, etc... additives from one oil may not work well with those from another. In most cases, it would just not be effective, in the worst, it could precipitate a salt (kind of like sand...) in the engine, or create significant corrosion or wear problems, or create sludge, blocking oil passages... (also not good).
Considering the price of engines, and the relatively low cost of oil and drive lubricants, I really don't think there is any reason not to run either high quality lubes designed for the application. Merc products are very well formulated, Amsoil is awesome, a number of the high quality petroleum based and synthetics are also outstanding products.
Whatever you do, change it... more often doesn't hurt, pushing it to the limit, well sucks to find out where that limit is the hard way...
my two cents worth...
not all synthetic oils are created equally - not even full sytnthetics are based on the same chemistry. Synthetic just means it was made by us and not in the ground. Amsoil and some other synthetics are based on polyalkylene oxides - not pure hydrocarbon. (and yes these can take on a huge amount of water compared to others and remain effective, 10% is a reasonable number!)
The answer to "can I mis synthetic and natural based oil?" is: It depends!
Also when mixing oils of any type, don't forget that they all have some degree of additive package including detergents, buffers, rheology modifiers, polymers, etc... additives from one oil may not work well with those from another. In most cases, it would just not be effective, in the worst, it could precipitate a salt (kind of like sand...) in the engine, or create significant corrosion or wear problems, or create sludge, blocking oil passages... (also not good).
Considering the price of engines, and the relatively low cost of oil and drive lubricants, I really don't think there is any reason not to run either high quality lubes designed for the application. Merc products are very well formulated, Amsoil is awesome, a number of the high quality petroleum based and synthetics are also outstanding products.
Whatever you do, change it... more often doesn't hurt, pushing it to the limit, well sucks to find out where that limit is the hard way...
my two cents worth...