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How to Cut back our Dependency on Foreign Oil While Being Frugal with Your Cash at the Pump |
If you watch or listen to the news, discussions happen all the time about the cost of a barrel of oil and the cost of gas at the fuel pump. The sale of big Sport utility vehicles have plummeted and manufacturers have been giving enormous rebates to manufacturers just to get rid of them. With costs of fuel leaping, people are seeking other methods to conserve on gas such as buying little or mid-size Suv’s, smaller cars or Hybrids. When listening in to the news, you may also hear about alternative fuels such as E85, Hydrogen or something else to decrease our foreign oil dependency. Crude oil is extracted from the earth and sent to refineries to manufacture our fuel. The sludge that is remanent at the refinery is then used to generate oil to lubricate the insides of the engines in our cars and trucks. Did you know that conventional oil from the ground is full of impurities, paraffin’s and waxes? Conventional oil coming from the ground has millions of various kinds of molecules. Lots of these molecules are similar in weight but not in structure. Refining the oil does not remove all of the critical impurities. The lubrication and performance qualities of refined petroleum are scarce. The refining approach cannot distinguish such molecules, so a wide spectrum of molecules is available in the finished lubricant created from crude oil. Many of the molecules from the crude oil contain paraffin (a wax-like substance destructive to your motor), which cause the lubrication to clump and flow very poorly in frigid temperatures. There is also sulfur, nitrogen and other nasty elements in refined crude oil that cause the accumulation of sludge and varnish inside of an motor. The sludge and break down of molecules are what significantly create wear and break down of the oil in your engine. That equivalent crude oil is also used to make tar for the roads. Is that something you wish to have lubricating your engine? The automobile manufacturers and dealerships seem to think so. That inexpensive conventional oil guarantees money all across the board. What causes this to happen? Manufacturers gloat over the low quality oil because it’s just good enough to get a vehicle to have beyond the warranty period before major wear starts to be noticeable, such as your valve guides wearing out. That’s when you see that puff of smoke when you first start your vehicle in the morning once you have accumulate high mileage on it. Since conventional oil is filled with all of these impurities and non-uniform molecules, it breaks down right away and generates sludge and varnish; hence you ought to change it at around 3,000 miles. This is a great reason to generate new customers at the dealership and the quick lubes. The persevere thing the dealers or oil change garages want is a lengthy long-term oil or an oil that will extend the life of an engine or transmission. Marc Graham, the president of Jiffy Lube, stated in an article that if they could get their customers to minimize their drain time by only 100 miles (changing the oil at 2,900 instead of 3,000 miles), that it would mean an additional $20 million dollars in receivables for the corporation each year. If they could get their customers to have one additional oil change per year, the corporation could generate an additional $294 million. I hope you can envision their motivation for the brisk intervals. It’s in their best interest, not yours. Here’s your opportunity to get involved in the movement to decrease the necessity for foreign oil dependency. Not only can you restrict to dependency on the bringing in of oil, you can also conserve at the pump while doing it. On top of that, you can also drastically drivetrain the life of your drivetrain, and that folks, is for certain not on the census of the car and truck builders. The covert schedule of the auto manufacturers is to have your drive train wear out after the warranty period so you can keep coming back to acquire more cars and trucks. It is not in their agenda for any vehicle manufacturer or repairman to tell you how to prolong the engine age of your vehicle. If they told you how to have your engine to last more, they would knock out their profit dividend. So how you can diminish the foreign oil dependency? That’s easy. Stop purchasing run-of-the-mill petroleum oil to lubricate your motor, transmission and axles. The next time you are due for an oil change, only acquire synthetic oil. And don’t purchase the "blends" as they have all of those bad impurities that I just mentioned above by mixing synthetic with familiar. Just purchase 100% synthetic. You don’t want any additional impurities in your motor. But synthetic oils are of great cost! That’s why I have been buying conventional oil to begin with. That is the biggest myth. If you use 100% synthetics in your entire engine and transmission, synthetic oil can end up costing you nothing. How is that possible, you ask? First let me explain the advantages and then I will do the math. Fully synthetic oils are chemically engineered from flawless chemicals instead of from crude oil. Fully synthetic oils do not contain that dirty sulfur, nitrogen and other elements that can cause sludge and varnish in your engine that widespread oils do. Fully synthetic oils also have a lot greater flash point and can command much higher temperatures than petrolium oil without breaking down. Since their resistance to break down is dramatically reduced, they can be used for a lot more timeframe than familiar oils. Fully synthetic oils stay much cleaner and last most notibly more than regular oils. Distinguided from traditional 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 create an oil exceed 3,000 miles? They sure can and they do just that. So what are the financial advantages of spending a little extra 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-term motor oils. The Amsoil corporation is the very first company in the U.S. to make synthetic motor oil for commuter automobiles, years before Mobil 1, Havoline, Valvoline, Castrol or any of the other big-named companies. Amsoil owns the trademark for the expression "First in Synthetics" because of this. The thing is that the majority folks don’t know is that Amsoil is the only corporation that manufactures motor oil last up to an uncommon 1-year or 35,000 miles and has been doing this since 1972. This oil is guaranteed in writing. If fully synthetic oils can persevere up to 11x more and can virtually remove wear in your drive train, then what are the benefits of using conventional oil? Well, not too much. Their introductory low price gets folks to acquire them. Using it for engine break-in to help seat valves and other components during the first several hundred miles. Other than that, it’s undoubtedly costing you a lot of cash to keep using petrolium oil. Look what happens to a transmission once you accumulate high mileage on it while using widespread 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 do away with that ought for a transmission rebuild. For every 20 degrees above 175 degrees, your transmission life is Reduced by 50%! 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 most the public notices. I will offer you an example in my own personal vehicle. I was at first getting 22 MPG on the highway with my vehicle with conventional oils. I switched over my engine, 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, gas was $3.19/gallon for premium that I was using. That same $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 petrolium oil, I’d still be getting 22 MPG, not the 4 MPG boost from synthetics. When driving 2,000 miles every month at 22 MPG, that comes out to 90 gallons of fossil fuel per month. With the boost in fuel economy to 26 MPG, the same 2,000 miles every month now only uses 76 gallons of gas. That’s $44 every month that I saved right there. $44 x 12 months = $535 per year in fuel savings. That’s not too bad of an investment. Not only am I conserving money on the fuel (in truth being frugal with more at the pump than I spent for all of the oil, which basically produces 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 have them drained. Not to mention the fact that I am cheating the manufacturers intentional obsolescence of my vehicle. By using the 100% fully synthetics, my drive train will now last much more than what the manufacturer designed it to persevere for. And to think that’s just for me. Imagine if I owned a company with a fleet of cars and trucks. How much cash would I save then? Our governments could save millions of dollars if they sat down and ran the numbers in spreadsheets to compute savings over time. That’s millions of dollars of our hard earned tax dollars being saved. Think of all of the police automobiles and utility vehicles that the gov'ts currently use that could keep going for an extra few years before getting rid of them as fargoing as their power plants ran like new (which they typically do when using synthetic oils in the drive trains.) Those long-term benefits 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 drove 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 same measure. 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 crazy prices of houses, people have been moving more distant out to the suburbs. Over 50% of the folks are driving extra than 1 hour to have to work just to live in affordable housing. If all the people stopped using petrolium oil for their automobiles, the demand would go down and the price of gas would most likely plummet. If costs of fuel went down like crazy, then the sales of huge Sport utility vehicles such as Hummers, Chevy Tahoe’s and Ford Expeditions would probably dramatically boost. Due to a lot of folks driving a lot more and having costs of gasoline soar, Hybrid SUV's are starting to come out. These cars and trucks also ought synthetic oil. Since Hybrid SUV's are extra high-priced than regular SUV's Due to the added Hybrid provisions, it takes longer for to see the financial benefits. In late 2006, the lowest priced Hybrid SUV on the market was the 2007 Saturn Vue Green Line. It boasts 27 MPG in the city and 32 MPG on the expressway. Just like regular SUV's, these vehicles also can benefit with synthetic oil by extending the age of the drive train.
Robert Riley is a programmer/analyst who comes from a family of auto mechanics who have owned a fleet of vehicle service stations and garages that change oil such as Enco, Texaco and Amoco since the early 1960’s. The Riley family has as a history in working in auto repair shops as far back as the early 1900’s. Robert Riley is an indendent dealer for synthetic oil.
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