A store by me is seling Havoline 5W-30 for $15.99 for a case of 12. Has anybody used Havoline or have any suggestions? My car will be getting its first oil change in about 1000 miles. What do other people use as far as conventional oil. I'll be going to synthetic when the car is fully broken in. I've looked at the oil spreadsheet and have read other great articles.. but i was just wondering what the consensus on this forum was.

 

my first couple of oil changes were done using havoline 5w-30. ive gathered that most people around here that run conventional use castrol. i switched to mobil 1 at 9k.

 

patbsn: Havoline oil is probably one of the lesser known, and lesser used, brand names these days. But, IMHO it's a fine oil even though I haven't seen any UOA of it on Bill's spreadsheet. It's an old Texaco brand, but is actually marketed by 2 different companies these days (Chevron now & Shell/Texaco before Chevron bought them) and produced out of 2 different refineries (a Shell refinery... identied by the word "Equilon" on the back of the quart container, and a Chevron refinery...identified by the wording "Chevron/Texaco" on the back of the container). You commonly find the "Equilon" Havoline oil at Walmart, and the "Chevron" Havoline oil at Kmart. Eventually, the "Equilon" version will no longer be sold in the US as the marketing timelimit expires for the old Shell/Texaco merger. Yes, very confusing.

More importantly, the Chevron version of Havoline oil is viewed as the better oil by "oil junkies" on the internet these days because it is refined so much like the Chevron Supreme brand oil, with it's ISOSYN technology. And UOA results of Chevron Supreme oil are putting up some impressive wear numbers for 3-4K drain intervals on other sites where it is posted. But is the Chevron Hav. oil really better than the Equilon Hav. oil in the real world? Who know! Both Havoline and Chevron are the only dino oils I've ever seen that claim to pass the Nissan KA24E engine performance test, for what that's worth.

Havoline oil is NOT the same as Chevron Supreme oil, but if you read the tech data sheets and msds sheets for both oils available on the Chevron web site, you'll discover that they are worded indentical. Chevron tech support will even tell you that the two oils are very similar in performance. Surprise. Surprise.

So, is $16 for a case a good buy? Yes, especially compared to the $1.50 to $1.70 rate most other big brand names go for. But my local Walmart sells Havoline every day for $1.07, and if you watch the Sunday ads you may be able to catch it on sale at Kmart for about $.99. Target recently closed out of it for $.68 a quart. I put my money where my mouth is and bought 2 cases of the Chevron version of the Havoline brand which I use in my Altima and a Ford van. It was a hell of a buy at Target. My Maxima however gets M1

 

To think I'm paying like $5/quart for my AMSoil......


~limsandy

 

Thanks a ton. I looked at Bill's spreadsheet when i first started looking at different oils and synthetics and like you said, havoline wasn't on it. With so many brand of oils out there, a newbie like me can get confused and i didn't want to screw up a good thing with this car.