Of Engine oil and YouTube

I was surfing YouTube the other day and I came across a video where a guy was trying to compare synthetic and conventional motor oils.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lshd7WR-a6I

Eric means well with his video, the problem is that he's totally wrong about many of the things that he states. Here is what I wrote to him on his facebook page.

Hi Eric. Your Youtube video on engine oil, synthetic VS conventional caught my attention earlier this week. A lot has changed in the last few years and it's really important that auto technicians keep up with the technology in today's cars and that means engine oils too. We can't advise the vehicle owners correctly if we don't have up to date training ourselves. I posted a link to your video in the Technical Discussion Forum of the iATN. It went a long way to show other technicians how much harder we have to work to make sure that consumers are getting the right information.

I see you have a message from Kevin McCartney here, please take the time to talk to him and listen to what he has to say. He has really opened all of our eye's to just how complicated, and yet important this topic really is. For example, in your video you had two bottles of 5W30, one conventional, and one synthetic. Did you know that neither of them meet GM's current specification for 5W30 dexos? Did you know that GM obsoleted their previous specifications of 4718M and 6094M, which means dexos is now the specification for every GM vehicle all the way back to about 2004? (plus any previous that called for full synthetic) The dexos specification vastly exceeds the current API SN and ILSAC GF5 requirements.

Kevin has really been working hard to help all of us better understand how motor oil has changed in the last decade. If you ever hear that he is teaching a class near you, GO! His presentation is basically an epiphany, there is what you think you know before you attend his class, and what you really know after it.