brand specific oil

[Guest]

It's been a while since I've paid much attention to the oil I buy. With normal cars I've just bought synthetic oil of the correct grade on the very rare occasion I've had to top up between main stealer services.

 

However with a track day looming I needed to get some oil for the seven and came across brand specific oil, i.e VAG, BMW, Merc etc. All the oil was the same grade but apparently produced to manufacturers specification. So I obligingly bought the Caterham branded (all right ford) stuff 😬.

 

Any one know if there is any significant difference or is it all just smoke and mirrors?

 

 

[Jonathan Kay]

I think it's nearly all smoke (hopefully the absence of) and mirrors, and making it as easy as possible for the buyer. There are some independent comparisons but they're hard to do. I don't think they have shown anything special about that kind of branded oil.

 

If it meets the specification it's OK for most purposes.

 

But thrashing a 7 at high acceleration is unusual: that's why there are dry sumps and debates about foam in the sump.

 

Most 7s get their oil changed very frequently compared to road cars so long life isn't very important.

 

I use Caterham recommended spec fully synthetic in my unmodified K series.

 

What's your engine and set-up? And how do you use your 7?

 

Jonathan

[Dr Slotter]

You can achieve the same SAE oil grade in various ways, so the manufacturer specs/branding tend to cover what specific additive packages they would prefer you to use. Whether that really matters is a different point entirely, of course.

[6speedmanual]

And some of the Oil Brand oils rather than OEM Brand oils claim to meet BMW, Ford, GM, Merc, VW, etc, suggesting that the OEM specs are not particularly different from one another.

 

Peter

[CharlesElliott]

Most of the 'brand specific' oils are there to support long life servicing. Because of the demands placed on the oil to keep going for 20K miles odd, they want to make sure there is the right batch of additives.