MaxPF
AGNTSA
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It depends on the cause of the oil consumption. If the M1 isn't handling the heat in the piston ring area it could cause the oil control rings to do a poor job. A higher detergency/solvency oil could clean the rings off and better tolerate the heat. Keep in mind that I-5s, being marginal for the H3, get run hard. This means higher temps at the ring lands. Also hotter valves and valve guide seals. I fully admit it may have zero effect, but it's easy to try. You have to change the oil eventually anyway, so there's no harm in trying something different.
Well, a little primer on base stocks is needed to understand what I am about to tell you, so read this link: :link:
If you read the link you saw where group III oils are sometimes called "synthesized hydrocarbons" due to the severe hydrotreatment. In reality they are just heavily refined petroleum oils. In contrast, group IV and V oils are synthesized from chemical precursors - they are truly synthetic.
Here's what happened: back in the day, there were a few real synthetic oils on the market. Most, including Mobil 1, used group IV (polyalpha olefin) base stocks. A few were group V, and used mostly polyol esters and some diesters as base stocks (Redline uses polyol ester base stocks). In the 90's Castrol decided to enter the synthetic motor oil market, but they used Group III oils as their base stocks in their "synthetic" products. Mobil sued, but the courts ruled that "synthetic" is a marketing term, and thus Castrol could call their motor oil "synthetic" even though it used non-synthetic base stocks. At the time large scale production of severely hydrotreated base oils were relatively new, and the oils do have better performance characteristics compared to group II oils, so the group III based "synthetics" worked well and were considerably cheaper to manufacture.
In the end, Mobil threw in the towel and reformulated Mobil 1 to use the less expensive group III base stocks. Other big oil makers followed suit when they introduced "synthetic" products - Valvoline (Ashland), Quaker State, Pennzoil, Chevron, Shell, etc. ALL use group III base oils in their "synthetic" products. There is some PAO in certain viscosity ranges, but the bulk of the oil is still group III. The "synthetic blends" are a blend of group III and group II oils. So, your Mobil 1 is not really a synthetic oil; it's all marketing. It IS still a quality product though.
Fram?! Horrors!!!! Get something, ANYTHING, else!
