Amsoil Products ATF, MTF, Gear Oils

You will be fine. Look at the Toyota recommended viscosity.

 

Thanks for the reassurance. The recommended is quite thin, but with everyone screaming 140wt or bust after regearing it got me nervous. I value any MPG increase I can get.

 

A lot of people recommending 140 are not coming from a position of knowledge. "Thicker" is not always better. In fact - frictional heating from SAE 140 is significant. It's necessary to just enough film strength which is provided by 90, and 110 being the old upper end of the SAE 90 range, still being in the safe zone.

 

For the engine oil flush, the bottle says to idle for 15 or so mins and immediately change the oil. Is it going to be bad/problematic to let the engine cool down after the idle? Or will the junk just settle back to the system? I'm just paranoid about spilling hot oil on myself during the change (also done it)

 

Not at all. Let it cool AND let it drain for a goodly while, no problem.

 

Good to know. I did it hot anyway, threw on some gloves and went with it. Between that and the engine cleaner, I think the taco is happy again.
Hopefully pewpews feel the same way about amsoil

 

@TartanEagle you added the extra low micron filter as a secondary one to your standard oil filter a while back, have you ran it long enough to figure out what that's done for your oil change intervals? Wondering what the overall return on investment has been from that mod.

 

just ordered 6 quarts for my 500miles regear break in change..

 

I wish. I have 750 miles on the new set-up.
Stupid commie covid keeps me working from home. (Not complaining about that! Only about not getting to drive.)
Such low miles haven't given me the opportunity to make use of the long life oil.
With past vehicles I changed my oil at either the 25,000 or 36,000 mile mark depending on if I had regular Amsoil or Signature Series Amsoil in there. Of course I expect to exceed that interval now. The quality of the air filter will play a huge roll in just how much longer I can go; and Blackstone Labs will let me know how it's working.

I was just barely putting miles on the truck before covid because of how close I lived to my job, but now it's worse. Ironically the truck is a 2017 and on 17May my odometer hit 17000 miles. I prolly should have bought a lottery ticket...
I noticed that my short commute was keeping me from evaporating the condensation out of the oil. Grrrr! The by-pass filter should now also help with removing that water - when I eventually go back to working away from home. (Yes, I did purposely drive for a distance every once in a while just to boil off the water. But every day would have been better!)

 

Ha, I hear you. What a bummer. I bet with the amsoil you could probably go 50k without an oil change. Which blows convention out of the water. What oil/air filters did you use to get to that 25-36k mark in conjunction with the amsoil?

My diff is weeping, probably gonna bite the bullet and put in the amsoil when I fix the gasket. Might as well swap the engine & transfer case oil too while I'm at it.

@Pablo8 am I reading your first post right? The transfer case uses MTF oil?

 

I'm going to say there's no engine that can go 50K without an oil change. I don't care what you put in it, heat breaks the stuff down and dust and debris does make its way into things.

 

Such a simple question and I write a book to answer. :-(

Easy part = have always used Amsoil oil filters. Though in past 10 years or so I alternate with the Wix or Hastings label a time or two.

Book part= I had typed out the air filter info in my first response to you - and then deleted it. Didn't want to distract too far from your orig question.
I used an Amsoil "Lifetime Air Filter". An oil soaked foam type. (Back in the 70s & 80s (maybe 90s) it could even be custom made to your specs. I put one in a '42 Studebaker p-up to replace the original oil bath one.)

Have used the LTF since 1979. Back then there weren't any cars out that has MAF sensors to worry about contamination from the filter oil. But I have had them on cars w/ MAF sensors.

The Amsoil LTF were the -only- filters that worked up in the PNW when Mt. St Helen blew. Because they were washable and they actually filtered the incoming air! Some day I'll post photos of the demonstration device that was used to compare filters (efficiency, function, & volume).

So later, when Amatuzio came out with the by-pass filter arrangement, he guaranteed (as in "complete, free, engine replacement & labor") that you would never have to change your oil again - EVER. ***As long as you complied with these four things: use Amsoil oil, Amsoil oil filters (both full flow & by-pass), the Amsoil Lifetime Air Filter (LTF), and participate in an oil analysis from an independent lab!***
The reason for the analysis was mostly due to the possibility of an undetected (by you) failure of either the coolant system or fuel system. Either of those would be derogatory to the oil, but neither are the oil's fault. Also, the engine had to be mechanically sound to start with. He wasn't goin to warranty a piece of crap right out of the blocks.

The LTF was mandatory in the scenario because the intake air was the largest cause of contaminants in the engine (& engine oil). No other filter came close to the LTF for cleaning the air. There was NO through passageway for a dirt particle, from the outside to the inside. Every tunnel had a dead end to it. The air could pass through the membrane, but nothing larger. Know that the K&N of the day was one of the absolute worse. (Racers loved K&N because it allowed for great air flow - which equals horsepower. But that was due to virtually no filtering properties! It let in a lot of containments, but the racers rebuilt their engines after every race, so they didn't care about wear.)

Anyway, I installed an LTF on my last ride (before the Taco) in 1996 and was still using it in Apr 2020 when I sold the car (a '93 Civic VX). The filter had over 250,000 miles of use - with many washings and re-oilings in it's life (every 6 months). It truly lived up to it's name. (The Civic had over 290k (untouched mechanically) and with only six (6) oil changes. I did change the filter at 12,5k intervals and topped up the oil to replace what stayed in the old filter.

Now I use OEM, but will change to an Amsoil one when I get enough miles on the current one. LTF is no longer available and I don't have confidence that the current filter will do as good of a job. It will do well - just not up to the "never change oil again" quality. Also why that guarantee is no longer offered, I guess. Hence I will rely on the lab to tell me if the oil is getting too polluted.

All make sense?

 

crystal clear. wow. I didn't know about the LTF. Too bad they stopped making it. Read the whole saga btw, thanks for taking the time to write it up. Sounds like they're still making the best filters though even if it's not as good as before.

 

Amsoil has always bet their reputation on quality (above & beyond). If something doesn't work after they release it, they pull if off the market.
Not talking LTF here. Those were on the market for decades! I don't know it, but I'm guessing they got pulled simply due to MAF sensor contamination. ??? But then, maybe it was the lack of availability of materials?

What I had in mind that was quickly pulled soon after release were the "Automatic Wheel Balancers" in the late '70s. They were a flat steel plate (with your wheel bolt pattern holes in it) that had a 1"-2" tube attached around the circumference. This tube was filled with a goodly amount of lead shot. As the tire started to roll, the shot would seek the out-of-balance condition and proportion itself to level the playing field of weight (put the tire/wheel combo in balance). You installed one at each wheel.

Neat idea, but mediocre results. It kind of worked but I think a large thump (pothole) could re-distribute the shot and throw the wheel out of balance. It would prolly take another pothole to get it back in balance (???). Not really sure where the flaws were, but Amsoil took them off the market after only a short period because they determined the balancers weren't to their level of quality. Maybe they just broke & slung shot all over. I don't know.

{I remember the devices. Dad had them on a '73 Mazda RX-3. But don't know if they worked or not. I'm sure the wheels were already spun-balanced before he installed them. So how does one tell?}

Amsoil Rain Clear is no longer available either. It worked great! But I often wonder if it was the cause of that wiper chatter I would sometimes see. Again, IDK.

I guess some things were pulled just because they didn't sell well. But I have no doubt that Amsoil would pull an item fast if it failed to perform. So... their filters today are absolutely of high quality and outstanding performance!

(You may have noticed that with 42 years of using Amsoil products -exclusively-, I tend to ramble-on about them. )

 

Hey your stories are giving me more and more confidence in my decision to run their products

 

Good to hear that wearing my fingertips out isn't all in vain.
They truly are high performing, great products! They are still un-matched by any other brand. Look at the published data charts.

I worked in a plating shop for a bit in 1996 (Northwest Airlines). The boss there was a chemist and I posed this question to him: "Amsoil and Mobile 1 both claim 25,000 miles oil changes*, but one is a dibasicacidester and the other, a polyalphaolfin. How do they compare at the molecular level?"
Remember high school chemistry class when bonding between molecules were shown as dashes (like water H-O-H (H2O))?
He drew out the make-up of each oil using that mapping. Amsoil has double bonds in many places and Mobile 1 only had single bonds everywhere. He said, "For me, I'd take Amsoil just because it is that much stronger by way of the double bonds, for the same claim."
Made me proud I had chosen the best already.

*Both had that right on the bottle label.

Edit: If oil is ever subjected to "shear", it is these molecular bonds that get cut. A stronger bond is more resistant to shear.
If someone was to put straight 40w or 50w (racing & diesel oils) in an engine designed & built for 0w or 5w; that 40w or 50w could be sheared back when it is forced through the close tolerances.

 

Damn! That's a convincing argument.

 

I was already a diehard, tried & true user of Amsoil for about 18 years before that. It had proved itself first hand to me too many times to look anywhere else.
But it was Great getting that down to the nitty-gritty reinforcement from him! Science can really set things straight.

 

30yr/360,000mile truck plan - go! Just replaced oils at 5k - sig 0-20 engine, rear diff and front diff. Really like the gear oil pouches, made filling super easy. Engine seems even quieter now if that's possible. First engine oil change 221miles and second at 1223miles.

 

Wasn't a fan of the Amazon pump getting oil everywhere, if the pouches are that easy I might go that route in.... *checks odometer*..... 40,000 miles or so.