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How to Lower our Foreign oil dependency While Saving your Cash at the Pump

By: Robert Riley

If you watch or pay attention to the news, conversations come up many times about the cost of a barrel of oil and the price of fossil fuel at the gas pump. The sale of big Sport utility vehicles have gone down and manufacturers have been giving sizable rebates to manufacturers just to lose them. With costs of gasoline increasing, folks are seeking other methods to conserve on fossil fuel such as purchasing little or mid-size Sport utility vehicles, smaller cars or Hybrids. When paying attention to the news, you may also find out about alternative fuels such as E85, Hydrogen or something else to restrict our foreign oil dependency.

Crude oil is extracted from the earth and delivered to refineries to generate our fuel. The sludge that is leftover at the refinery is then used to create oil to lubricate the internals of the engines in our cars and trucks. Did you know that conventional oil from the earth is full of impurities, paraffin’s and waxes? Petrolium oil coming from the ground has millions of various kinds of molecules. Lots of these molecules are similar in weight but not in structure. Refining the lubricant does not clear out all of the complex impurities. The lubrication and performance qualities of refined petroleum are scarce. The refining approach cannot tell apart such molecules, so a wide assortment of molecules is obvious in the finished lubricant made from crude oil. Many of the molecules from the crude oil contain paraffin (a wax-like substance that can cause harm to your engine), which cause the lubrication to lump and flow very poorly in cold temperatures. There is also sulfur, nitrogen and other awful elements in refined crude oil that cause the build up of sludge and varnish inside of an motor. The sludge and break down of molecules are what most notibly create wear and break down of the oil in your engine.

That same crude oil is also used to make tar for the roads. Is that something you wish to have circulating oil in your motor? The automobile manufacturers and dealerships seem to think so. That low-cost conventional oil guarantees revenue all over the place. How is this possible? Manufacturers appreciate the poor quality oil because it’s just well enough to have a vehicle to get passed the warranty period before major wear starts to be discernible, such as your valve guides wearing out. That’s when you see that puff of smoke when you first start your vehicle in the morning once you have put high mileage on it. Since petrolium oil is filled with all of these impurities and non-uniform molecules, it breaks down swiftly and creates sludge and varnish; therefore you need to change it at approximately 3,000 miles. This is a great excuse to generate foot traffic at the dealership and the mechanic shop. The persevere thing the dealers or mechanic shop wish to have is a long long-term oil or an oil that will prolong the age of an motor or transmission. Marc Graham, the president of Jiffy Lube, stated in an article that if they could get their customers to curtail their drain interim by only 100 miles (draining the oil at 2,900 instead of 3,000 miles), that it would mean an additional $20 million dollars in earned income for the company each year. If they could have all of their customers to get one extra oil change per year, the corporation could generate an extra $294 million. I hope you can realize their motivation for the curtailed intervals. It’s in their agenda, not yours.

Here’s your opportunity to participate in the movement to cut back the necessity for foreign oil dependency.

Not only can you lower to the need on the importing of oil, you can also conserve at the pump while doing it. On top of that, you can also dramatically prolong the age of your drivetrain, and that people, is certainly not on the schedule of the vehicle manufacturers. The hidden timetable of the auto manufacturers is to have your drive train wear out after the warranty period so you can keep coming back to purchase extra vehicles. It is not in their agenda for any vehicle manufacturer or mechanic to tell you how to extend the engine life of your vehicle. If they told you how to have your motor to persevere longer, they would eradicate their profit dividend.

So how you can decrease the dependency on foreign oil?

That’s simple. Stop purchasing widespread petroleum oil to lubricate your motor, transmission and axles. The next time you are due for an oil drain, only get synthetic oil. And don’t buy the "blends" as they have all of those bad impurities that I just mentioned above by mixing synthetic with conventional. Just buy 100% synthetic. You don’t wish to have any additional impurities in your engine.

But synthetic oils are uneconomical! That’s why I have been buying conventional oil to begin with.

That is the biggest myth. If you use 100% synthetics in your entire drive train, synthetic oil can end up costing you nothing. How is that possible, you ask?

First let me explain the benefits and then I will do the math. Fully synthetic oils are chemically engineered from flawless chemicals instead of from crude oil. Fully synthetic oils do not have that dirty sulfur, nitrogen and other elements that can cause sludge and varnish in your engine that widespread oils do. Fully synthetic oils also have a much higher flash point and can command much higher temperatures than conventional oil without breaking down. Since their resistance to break down is dramatically reduced, they can be used for a lot more timeframe than traditional oils. Fully synthetic oils stay much cleaner and last most notibly longer than familiar oils. Distinguided from familiar oils, fully synthetic oils have uniform molecules which ensure low friction as the lubricant layers slide across each other (which is what you want in your hot running mechanical engine.)

If they can land a space craft on the moon, can’t they generate an oil last longer than 3,000 miles?
They sure can and they do just that.

So what are the financial benefits of spending a little extra cash on a quart of oil?

For one, 100% fully synthetic oils can last up to 11 times longer than conventional oil depending on the can or truck, application and fossil fuel type. A little corporation called Amsoil is the only company that has such durational motor oils. The Amsoil corporation is the very first corporation in the United states to make synthetic motor oil for passenger automobiles, years before Mobil 1, Havoline, Valvoline, Castrol or any of the other big-named companies. Amsoil owns the trademark for the expression "First in Synthetics" because of this. The thing is that the majority people don’t know is that Amsoil is the only company that delivers motor oil last up to an noteworthy 1-year or 35,000 miles and has been doing this since 1972. This oil is guaranteed in writing.

If fully synthetic oils can persevere up to 11x longer and can virtually expel wear in your drive train, then what are the advantages of using conventional oil?

Well, not too much. Their initial low price tag gets people to buy them. Using it for motor break-in to assist in seating valves and other parts during the first several hundred miles. Other than that, it’s in reality costing you a lot of money to keep using petrolium oil. Look what happens to a transmission once you put high mileage on it while using traditional transmission fluid. You can end up spending $1,500, $2,000 or much more on remanufacturing a transmission on a commuter vehicle. If you would have had used a fully synthetic transmission fluid which resists heat and break down of molecules, you could potentially erase that ought for a transmission rebuild. For every 20 degrees above 175 degrees, your transmission life is Reduced by 50%! When facing up to $2,000 on a repair bill, do you really want to risk that chance by sticking with old school crude oil?

Other savings of changing to synthetics are the gas mileage boost that most everyone notices. I will give you an example in my own personal vehicle. I was in the beginning getting 22 MPG on the highway with my vehicle with prevalent oils. I switched over my motor, transmission and rear differential over to Amsoil's synthetics. Afterwards, I realized a gain of 4 MPG Due to the reduced friction of the synthetics. I paid approximately $250 (including labor costs) to have all of my fluids changed over. That change over lasts up to 1 year on the oil and several years for the other fluids. At the time of my tests, fuel was $3.19/gallon for premium that I was using. That equivalent $250 is close to what I would pay for a year’s worth of oil changes at a quick lube for petrolium oil, but with conventional oil, I’d still be getting 22 MPG, not the 4 MPG boost from synthetics.

When driving 2,000 miles per month at 22 MPG, that comes out to 90 gallons of fossil fuel every month.
With the increase in fuel economy to 26 MPG, the similar 2,000 miles every month now only uses 76 gallons of gas. That’s $44 per month that I saved right there. $44 x 12 months = $535 per year in fossil fuel savings.

That’s not too bad of an investment. Not only am I conserving money on the fossil fuel (obviously saving more at the pump than I spent for all of the oil, which basically commissions the oil free when you do the math), I am also saving on time because the oil changes persevere up to 1 year or 35,000 miles before I have to have them drained. Not to hint at the fact that I am cheating the manufacturers projected obsolescence of my can or truck. By using the 100% fully synthetics, my engine and transmission will now persevere much longer than what the manufacturer designed it to persevere for.

And to think that’s just for me. Imagine if I owned a company with a fleet of cars and trucks. How much money would I conserve then? Our gov'ts could conserve millions of dollars if they sat down and ran the numbers in spreadsheets to figure savings over time. That’s millions of dollars of our hard earned tax dollars being saved. Think of all of the police cars and utility cars and trucks that the governments currently use that could keep going for an extra few years before getting rid of them as fargoing as their power plants ran like new (which they typically do when using synthetic oils in the drive trains.) Those extensive-term benefits and savings are not thought about when using petrolium oil.

Allow’s look at how much oil is saved on an annual basis. If I drove 1 year on 6 quarts of fully synthetic oil for 24,000 miles, if I would have done it the old way, I would have had to have 8 oil changes and use up 48 quarts of oil to travel the equivalent measure. That’s 48 quarts of oil imported from another country. By using the fully synthetic oil, I have saved the country 48 quarts of oil that I did not have to use for the year.

But how many people drive 24,000 miles in a year? LOTS! With the crazy prices of homes, folks have been moving more distant out to the suburbs. Over 50% of the people are driving additional than 1 hour to have to work just to live in affordable housing. If the public stopped using conventional oil for their cars, the demand would go down and the expenditure of gas would most likely plummet. If costs of gasoline went down like mad, then the sales of large Sport utility vehicles such as Hummers, Chevy Tahoe’s and Ford Expeditions would probably dramatically increase.

Article Source: http://www.articlemanual.com

Robert Riley is a programmer/analyst who comes from a family of auto mechanics who have owned a fleet of auto service stations and oil change shops such as Enco, Texaco and Amoco since the early 1960’s. The Riley family has as a history in working in vehicle repair shops as far back as the early 1900’s. Robert Riley is an indendent dealer for Amsoil where you can have a really great education on engine oil.



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