On Mon, 22 Mar 2021 12:42:26 -0700 (PDT), TimR
wrote:

On Monday, March 22, 2021 at 1:50:40 PM UTC-4, mike wrote:
Kids are on spring break so I changed their oil & filters.

Bought Costco oil but to my surprise they no longer sell dino juice.
Bought Mobil 1 oil filters at Walmart but they also had no dino juice.
Went to O'Reillys but their conventional was more expensive than synthetic.

I had Costco look up who had conventional oil and it turns out they
discounted their last cases of Chevron 10W30 SN & 10W40 SN conventional oils
to $9.97/10 quarts more than a year ago and haven't sold any conventional
motor oils since then at any Costco in my area.

Huh?
Since when is conventional oil hard to find in bulk?
Is this a new thing?

I'm not complaining or even asking whether the $25/10 quarts Kirkland fully
synthetic 5W30 SP oil is good or not as I know all about synthetic oil
advantages & disadvantages over conventional gasoline engine motor oils.

I'm just asking if you've also found it hard to find conventional oil by the
case at good prices (which means at your local Costco or department store)?

My VW came with dire warnings not to put anything but the recommended dealer oil in. But it's new enough not to leak down, so not a worry for a while.

Conventional and synthetic oils both start with the same raw dino juice though. The only difference is in the refining. Both have a range of different molecular weight oils, but the synthetic has a much tighter range.
Except for the synthetics that use natural gas - and even vegetable
oil - for their feed stock. Or oven is some cases - like in South
Africa - COAL.
Most true synthetic engine oils have NO petroleum base - they are
totally manufactured PAO base stocks.

PAO fluids are classified as a Group IV base oil and are made by a
two-step reaction process using linear alpha-olefins like 1-decene.
The first step is the synthesis of oligomers (polymers with few
repeating monomer units) from the linear alpha-olefin. The second step
is the hydrogenation of the remaining double bonds (unsaturation) in
the oligomer and subsequent distillation to separate the unreacted
monomer and light-viscosity grade PAO.
Low-viscosity PAO fluids are used in automotive applications, such as
engine oil and gear lubricants. High-viscosity PAO fluids have also
become popular in industrial fluids and greases. Since PAO fluids are
synthetic hydrocarbons, they are compatible with and often combined
with mineral-based oils.

(from
https://www.powermag.com/understandi...ed-lubricants/)