I'm not sure which kind of synthetic you are using, so it's hard to make a comparison but lets use absurdly short intervals for comparison sake and say that every 3k for dino and every 5k for Mobil 1. I drive 40k per year on average and my vehicle uses 5 quarts of oil.
Synthetic (Mobile 1) 5 quarts of oil on sale at 3.75/qt......18.75 Filter: Mobile 1 filter................11.99 1 Oil change...........................~30.00 8 oil changes per year................$240.00
Dino (Mobile 0) 5 quarts of oil on sale..................4.99 Motorcraft Filter........................3.99 1 oil change.............................9.00 13 oil changes per year................$117.00
Now lets try something more realisitic with 6000 mile changes on the dino oil and in your example 12k intervals with mobile 1 (or whatever you use)
Dino=7 changes per year.......63.00 Syn=3.3 changes per year......100.00
Quote: Now tell me.....How is dino oil cheaper?
Any questions? Or would you like to manipulate the numbers again?
I think you need to use the same filters in both comparisons since we are talking about the cost of Synthetic oil.
So in the case of the 3K vs 5K intervals you are talking $117 vs $176, using the Motorcraft filter in all cases.
And looking at 6K vs 12K the costs are $63 vs $73.60
Still convetional oil is cheaper, but not drastically.
Use the Mobil 1 filter in both cases and the cost to use conventional oil at shorter intervals is greater than to use synthetic.
Of course, any scenario can be crafted to make any choice appear to be the best, cost wise. So buy what makes you sleep better at night.
TB
"Seems like our society is more interested in turning each successive generation into cookie-cutter wankers than anything else." -- Jato 8/24/2004
