If you watch or pay attention to the news, discussions happen all the time about the expenditure of a barrel of oil and the price of fuel at the gas pump. The sale of large SUV’s have gone way down and manufacturers have been giving enormous rebates to manufacturers just to dump them. With costs of fuel ascending, folks are looking for other ways to save on gas such as purchasing little or mid-size SUV’s, smaller cars or Hybrids. When listening to the news, you may also hear about alternative energy such as E85, Hydrogen or something else to decrease our dependency on foreign oil.

Crude oil is extracted from the ground and sent to refineries to manufacture our fuel. The sludge that is leftover at the refinery is then used to manufacture oil to lubricate the internals of the motors in our vehicles. 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. Many of these molecules are similar in weight but not in structure. Refining the oil does not clear out all of the dangerous impurities. The lubrication and performance qualities of refined petroleum are limited. The refining process cannot tell apart such molecules, so a wide assortment of molecules is obvious in the finished lubricant made from crude oil. Lots of the molecules from the crude oil contain paraffin (a wax-like substance bad to your engine), which cause the lubrication to coagulate and flow very inadequately in cold 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 engine. The sludge and break down of molecules are what significantly cause wear and break down of the oil in your engine.

That comparable crude oil is also used to make tar for the roads. Is that something you want lubricating your engine? The auto manufacturers and dealerships seem to think so. That inexpensive conventional oil guarantees income all across the board. How can this happen? Manufacturers fancy the poor quality oil because it’s just acceptable enough to get a vehicle to have beyond 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 vehicle in the morning once you have put high mileage on it. Since petrolium oil is filled with all of these impurities and non-uniform molecules, it breaks down swiftly and generates sludge and varnish; therefore you ought to change it at around 3,000 miles. This is a perfect rationale to generate foot traffic at the dealership and the oil change shops. The last thing the dealers or oil change shops wish to have is a long durational oil or an oil that will prolong 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 curtail their drain time by only 100 miles (draining the oil at 2,900 instead of 3,000 miles), that it would mean an extra $20 million dollars in receivables for the company 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 meager intervals. It’s in their agenda, not yours.

Here’s your chance to get involved in the movement to decrease the necessity for foreign oil dependency.

Not only can you decrease to the need on the bringing in of oil, you can also save at the pump while doing it. In addition, you can also drastically extend the life of your drivetrain, and that folks, is certainly not on the census of the car and truck builders. The obscure census of the auto manufacturers is to have your drive train wear out after the warranty period so you can keep coming back to get extra vehicles. It is not in their best interest for any vehicle manufacturer or mechanic to tell you how to drivetrain the engine life of your vehicle. If they told you how to have your motor to last longer, they would cancel their profit balance.

So how you can lower the foreign oil dependency?

That’s simple. Stop buying traditional petroleum oil to lubricate your motor, transmission and axles. The next time you are due for an oil change, only purchase synthetic oil. And don’t buy the "blends" as they have all of those nasty impurities that I just mentioned above by mixing synthetic with familiar. Just purchase 100% synthetic. You don’t wish to have any additional impurities in your motor.

But synthetic oils are expensive! That’s why I have been buying conventional oil in the first place.

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 can that be, you ask?

First allow me explain the advantages and then I will do the math. Fully synthetic oils are chemically engineered from flawless chemicals rather than from crude oil. Fully synthetic oils do not contain that horrible sulfur, nitrogen and other elements that can cause sludge and varnish in your motor that conventional 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 much longer timeframe than conventional oils. Fully synthetic oils stay much cleaner and persevere significantly longer than prevalent oils. Distinguided from regular oils, fully synthetic oils have uniform molecules which ensure low friction as the lubricant layers slide across each other (which is what you wish to have in your hot running mechanical engine.)

If they can land a space craft on the moon, can’t they generate an oil last longer than 3,000 miles?
They sure can and they do just that.

So what are the financial benefits of spending a little additional 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 can or truck, application and gas type. A little company called Amsoil is the only company that has such long-term motor oils. The Amsoil corporation is the very first corporation in the U.S. to create synthetic motor oil for passenger automobiles, 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 most people don’t know is that Amsoil is the only company that constructs motor oil last up to an astounding 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 longer and can virtually eliminate wear in your engine and transmission, then what are the benefits of using petrolium oil?

Well, not too much. Their first low price tag gets people to get them. Using it for engine break-in to assist in seating valves and other parts during the first several hundred miles. Other than that, it’s actually costing you a lot of money to keep using conventional oil. Look what happens to a transmission once you put high mileage on it while using customary transmission fluid. You can end up spending $1,500, $2,000 or much more on remanufacturing a transmission on a passenger car. If you would have had used a fully synthetic transmission fluid which resists heat and break down of molecules, you could potentially get rid of that ought for a transmission rebuild. For every 20 degrees above 175 degrees, your transmission life is Cut in half! When facing up to $2,000 on a repair bill, do you really wish to have to risk that chance by sticking with old school crude oil?

Other savings of changing to synthetics are the gas mileage boost 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 prevalent 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 lasts up to 1 year on the oil and several years for the other fluids. At the time of my tests, fossil fuel was $3.19/gallon for premium that I was using. That similar $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 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 per month now only uses 76 gallons of fossil 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 being frugal with money on the fossil fuel (undoubtedly being frugal with more at the pump than I spent for all of the oil, which basically constructs the oil free when you do the math), I am also being frugal with on time because the oil changes persevere up to 1 year or 35,000 miles before I have to have them drained. Not to hint at the fact that I am cheating the manufacturers prearranged obsolescence of my can or truck. By using the 100% fully synthetics, my engine and transmission 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 corporation with a fleet of vehicles. How much money would I conserve then? Our governments could conserve millions of dollars if they sat down and ran the numbers in spreadsheets to calculate 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 cars and trucks that the governments currently use that could keep going for an extra few years before getting rid of them as lengthy as their engines ran like new (which they typically do when using synthetic oils in the drive trains.) Those extended-term benefits and savings are not thought about when using conventional 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 extent. 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 people drive 24,000 miles in a year? LOTS! With the crazy prices of homes, folks have been moving farther 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 all the people stopped using petrolium oil for their cars, the demand would go down and the expenditure of gas 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.