Dustin4u

Whats the difference/advantages of Synthetic oil VS regular oil.

I'm a complete noob who couldn't even change a spark plug Just curious as i've seen people mention it in other threads.

jreiter

iTrader: (6)

When you get down to it, the main advantage of synthetic oil is that it tends to last longer than regular oil. In otherwords, it doesn't break down as quickly, so it will continue to lubricate for more miles than regular oil will. This is necessary especially in cars that have longer intervals between oil changes. If you look at modern VWs and Audis, for example, they have 10k mile oil change intervals! You have to run synthetic in order to safely do that.

Others sometimes say that synthetic oil is "cleaner", but I can't comment on that. They also say that it lubricates "better", but I can't comment on that, either. I haven't seen any tests that prove or disprove either of those statements.

For some unknown reason, the 350Z user manual actually says to only use regular oil, not synthetic. I have no idea why they would say this, and no one I've asked has been able to give me a reason. That being said, a lot of people on this forum run synthetic with no problems. I have regular oil in my car right now, but I'll probably switch to synthetic at my next oil change unless someone can tell my why I shouldn't.