Don’t waster your money on regular oil when you’ve spent a ton on your engine.
I get junk coming across the transom all day long, but not too long ago I got a DVD from Quaker State that I stuffed into my DVD player on a lark. It was a slickly produced video about how Jeff Gordon won the spring Darlington race in 2007 using Quaker State synthetic oil. What was really amazing is that Gordon won that race with a water pump that had broken five laps before the end of the race. With the coolant temp pegged and the engine glowing red, Gordon stayed in the lead for the win. I wasn’t totally sold on it until I did some independent research, and found out that the story was quite true.
The synthetic oil gets credit for Gordon’s motor staying together for a very good reason: synthetic oil molecules are uniform in size, shape, weight, strength, and chemical properties. By comparison, mineral oil is an amalgamation of different weights and shapes of aromatic hydrocarbon compounds, which when mixed together, take on a general set of physical properties. Light molecules balance out heavy molecules for an average weight, the problem being that as heat and shear forces accumulate, the lubricating property of the oil changes in some bad ways.
I decided to use Quaker State Q HorsePower Synthetic in my 496-ci big-block because I can’t afford to put new bearings and rings in it if I lose a water pump or oil pressure—even if that loss is only momentary. You remember that last year I had oil starvation problems due to an oil pump pick-up that broke. There were times when I had almost zero oil pressure. Fortunately, I was running Pennzoil Platinum Synthetic at the time (Pennzoil and Quaker State are the same company, with slightly different products), and when the bearings were checked, we saw no damage, even after many 11-second quarter-mile passes.
If you’ve got serious coin in your engine, and you need it to stay together for many years between rebuilds, invest in a good synthetic like Quaker State. It will pay off in the long run. Quaker State Q HorsePower is available in the following weights: SAE 5W30, 10W-40, 5W-20, and 5W-50.