Why Synthetics?
What is a synthetic lubricant?
A synthetic lubricant contains more highly refined base oils than those used in conventional mineral oils, offering you superior protection and performance. Synthetic engine oils provide a variety of benefits that help keep your engine running at optimal performance for years.
To understand synthetic engine oils, let's look at the origins of engine oils. There are two basic types of lubricants available:
1. Conventional mineral oils are the traditional types
2. Synthetic lubricants, which are growing in popularity
A synthetic lubricant contains more highly refined base oils than those used in conventional mineral oils, offering you superior protection and performance. Synthetic engine oils provide a variety of benefits that help keep your engine running at optimal performance for years.
To understand synthetic engine oils, let's look at the origins of engine oils. There are two basic types of lubricants available:
1. Conventional mineral oils are the traditional types
2. Synthetic lubricants, which are growing in popularity
Both types are made from crude oil that comes from the ground. The difference is that synthetic oils are made from more advanced refining processes and are of a higher purity and quality than conventional mineral oils. This not only removes more impurities from the crude oil, it enables individual molecules in the oil to be tailored to the demands of modern engines. These customised molecules provide higher levels of protection and performance.
What's so good about synthetic lubricants?
The performance of synthetic oils is typically more robust, especially in terms of low temperature pumpability and high temperature stability and protection against deposits. These attributes can help towards reduced engine wear, fuel economy potential and long engine life.
Synthetic oils are also typically lower in viscosity than conventional oils, which can help improve fuel economy by reducing friction in the engine. Actual savings are dependent upon vehicle/engine type, outside temperature, driving conditions and your current engine oil viscosity. The higher your current viscosity, the greater the potential for savings.
Synthetic oils can also significantly improve fuel economy. During the warm-up period of a typical truck journey, mineral oils are thicker and move slower. Synthetics, however, get to work much quicker: the engine reaches peak operating efficiency that much sooner.
In all these important respects, synthetic lubricants can outperform mineral oils, offering significant advantages over conventional engine oils, such as:
Excellent Low Temperature Flow Performance -- Pour point is a measure of a lubricant’s ability to flow at low temperatures. Mobil Delvac™ synthetic lubricants are engineered to reduce internal friction, which results in outstanding flow characteristics at low temperatures. As a result, components are lubricated more effectively, especially during a cold start-up where a significant amount of component wear can take place.
Viscosity Stability – Higher viscosity index translates to a more stable viscosity across a broad temperature range. As well as the superior low temperature performance, Mobil Delvac synthetic lubricants resist thinning at elevated temperatures, resulting in superior protection across a greater operating temperature range.
Improved Oxidation and Thermal Stability – Mobil Delvac synthetic lubricants help reduce oil thickening with age and prevent deposits, which potentially leads to less downtime via extended oil drain intervals, all of which ultimately save you time and money.
Excellent Wear Protection – Engine manufacturers are constantly making design changes, generally resulting in harsher operating environments for engine and drivetrain lubricants. Mobil Delvac synthetic drivetrain lubricants provide superior anti-scoring performance, which helps increase gear life at high speeds and under shock loading conditions. Likewise, synthetic engine oils like Mobil Delvac 1™ ESP 0W-40 provide excellent wear protection in harsh engine environments.