Grumpy Bear

Swap costs and supply/demand balance. When a barrel comes out of the ground the entire range of products are present but not all at the same percentage. Breakdown of Refined Products The following table summarizes the approximate output from a standard 42-gallon barrel of crude oil: Product Type Gallons per Barrel Percentage of Total Gasoline 20 gallons 45% Diesel Fuel 9 gallons 21% Other Products 13 gallons 31% Most of that diesel figure is 'straight run' or cut from the barrel. Gasoline 'cut from the barrel runs 0 to 20% at the crude. So in the crude unit there is more diesel the gasoline, usually. The full refining experience however gives the tabled values. Ego there is half the diesel than gasoline after the 'first crack' That could be an FCC unit, or Isomax or.... Those units take heavy products and break the big ones into little ones. Those numbers are harder to get hold of but directionally it ends up the same. Really light products are very profitable. Ethylene and Propylene to name two. Those are cracked from slightly heavier feeds like NG and Propane and Ethane. The cracker harshness determines the feed for distillation. Those feeds come from less profitable products like diesel and gasoline. So...there is a swap cost. How much market is there TODAY and what crude am I running TODAY..... what is my process capable of always. There is this as well. The USA uses allot more gasoline than it does diesel so in the cracker the process is tilted to gasoline production which....limits supply of diesel. OTR uses the most and it has different requirements than automotive and agricultural. Limiting auto products. You are correct however. It is less refined, just less of it. Allot less.

Most thermostatically controlled ATF systems use a 'wax' pill just like the one in your water thermostat. They work on the expansion volume of the wax and the pill is constructed in such a way as to limit the travel to remain within that range. This means it has an opening temperature often called the 'cracking temperature' and a fully open temperature. For whatever reason oil is designated by it's fully open temperature and water by it's cracking temperature. Between the two it the "Regulating Temperature" The entire range is about 20 F from closed to open. In your example the lower limit, opening point of 145 F then has a fully open temp of 165 F and a throttling temperature of 155 F. Thing is, the throttling temperature needs two things to work properly. Enough system load high enough to reach the minimum and a heat sink (cooler/exchanger) large enough to prevent any load applied from exceeding the fully open temperature. If your system exceeds the fully open temperature it is screaming MORE COOLER. Here is the silly part of the whole thermostat system where the oil is cooled/heated by the radiator. Nothing is flowing to that system until the oil temperature reaches the cracking temperature unless it is equipped with a minimum flow bypass orifice or a bypass built into the seating surface of the plunger. That system meant to get it up to temp quicker isn't doing a thing until WORK drives if from ambient to cracking temp. One a cold winter day, like zero F, it may never get hotter than about 110 F. Sometimes not even that. People forget or are young enough to not know that until this millennia transmissions were cooled by the radiator cold tank alone and without a thermostat at all. In the 50's they weren't even cooled. OEMs learn everything the hard way. When an OEM tells you the trans "Works best" between 175 F and 220 F it means works best for THEM. The transmission thermostat is fuel play. If you watch you trans temps like I do you will learn that it may take a hundred miles if you are not towing and not driving more than say 55-60 mph on a zero F day to even reach 120 F and it might sit there all day if it's colder. Yet if functions perfectly over about 100 F. It may need to get a bit warmer for the fuel and spark maps to go without an multiplier. Worry more about too hot. Use a cooler large enough to put that thermostat in range.

How many years have I pointed out every point in that link to the folks here and been avalanched with criticisms and outright hostilities at times? I ran counter to even the great CUSTOMBOSS and Lake Speed Jr and the half dozen experts on YouTube and in the final.....GM, Physics (Stribeck) backs that Grumpy old Bear. Honestly, I never said a thing engineering hadn't studied silly and laid in concrete during WWII. But I'm old, the information is old and yet, the Laws of Physics are eternal. Okay there is one exception. I vehemently disagree with their use of the word 'tolerances' when what it meant is "clearance". The clearance is the distance between two objects. The tolerance is the degree of acceptable variation permitted in that clearance. I.E., piston to bore clearance is 0.004" with a tolerance of +/- .0002" so the clearance is in specification if it lies between 0.0038" and 0.0042". Cutting that 'tolerance in half has ZERO impact on lubrication requirements. Makes for more difficulty in manufacturing. But a tighter clearance 'MAY'. Depends on finish. Anyway.... It's one of those statements made by people to make themselves look smarter than they are to convince people who are as un-enlighten as they seem to manipulate their behaviors. But hey, the blind leading the blind puts them both in the pit.

Out and about yesterday on a long Saturday drive I passed a lot of Shell stations. My preferred, so I pay attention. Lot's of small town Illinois so not six stations in three blocks like the city. Everyone of them over a radius of say 100 miles had regular at $4.19 but one which was the one closest to home at $4.15. However Premium pricing varied greatly between 85 cents over regular to $1.50 over. I'm not counting the price of the station with the lowest regular so the reference is the same for the remainder and all within the same brand. However the spread discrepancy holds across all brands. @txab, any thoughts on that?

This is going to take allot of Assembly

There is a sign at my chiropractors office that says, "Don't quit, take a break." Sound advice. On a 65 degree day (F) I can still work pretty darn hard (I'm 72). On a 85 degree day with a good deal of humidity it takes me three days to do what in took at 65 degree in three hours. If I work to muscle exhaustion (back) it will take me days more to recover. Taking breaks to prevent that is most useful. A lift belt has been very useful in preventing both. Minister was giving a talk the other night where he was speaking of age and he used a clock to illustrate the human lifespan and it's ability to task. 1 to 45 was the second hand, scurry about. 46 to 70 the minute hand. Slower but...71 and up the hour hand...Hummm....until that talk I felt more like the minute hand. Then he says, the most useful hand on the clock is the hour hand. Without it you can't tell time. (Hour of the watch). I felt a bit better knowing we over 70 are useful.

You are winning more than battles. You're winning the war! Nice.

I went from every other day to about once in five since the rain abated. I'm not unhappy about that. Took most of the month for the ditches to dry enough to mow.

Not what I said but I can work with it anyway. Complete combustion produces CO2 and H20. When it's cold enough you can 'see' it as water vapor but it is always there and more so the better the tune up. It's physics, not an argument. In a cold motor when the cylinder jacket is below the condensation temperature the water goes to the pan and not the PCV system. Heating the oil moves it from liquid to vapor where it is removed by the PCV system. When and how much depends on temperatures. Of the air, the water and so on. It has little to with the humidity. Water is a combustion product.

Most say the oil temperature needs to above the boiling point of water to rid it of moisture and long enough to dry it. Many think that is about a hour at 212 F or more. Those people have never line dried cloths in a Midwest winter. Leave a pan of water sitting on the counter and eventually it all evaporates. So heat drives the time it takes. Water in oil under 175 F, the Nitration initiation temperature, is a minimum then for temperature and samples I've done that use Karl Fisher method say about a hour (in a healthy well tuned motor) over 175 F will dry it to under 800 ppm. Low enough to not be much of a factor. Motors with weak rings will take longer and the colder the air temperature the longer it takes. On a cold motor there is also the condensation temperature. Blowby gases that contain moisture are subject to that cold cylinder wall, like sweat on a glass of ice tea. But also subject to the Law of Partial Pressures. Wear studies by GM and the DOD indicate wear is a real issue below 85 F and a concern to 140 F but doesn't become a minimal factor until about 160 F. You know this intuitively when you see water vapor exit the exhaust pipe until the system gets above the dew point. It isn't magic, it's physics and it fascinates me. I know you didn't ask but....I over share sometimes. You keep the Camaro's high and tight.

I have thought an EV might have some practical value in extending the life of the ICE members of ones fleet. Now....I'm convinced of it. I've been letting my better half access Raven (Mitsubishi Mirage) for her needs while Dizzy has been in the shop. Being the fuel freak I am and given the fact Raven is capable of over 60 mpg in clean air on a warm day I was taken back by the wife's ability to take a car that had used a half a tank of gas that to that point had returned a value of 57 mpg and return in with a decimating 51 mpg for that same tank in that same day in a 15 mile round trip of short hop errands and a stop in the drive through at Micky D's. Trust me on this. It would take the remainder of that tank driven on the highway to return that tank to just 54 mpg. This is not a Mitsubishi issue. This is an ICE issue that is magnified in vehicles capable of such high fuel economy values. On a percentage basis your 1500 does the same thing. Short hopping an ICE consumes a good deal more fuel and in doing so provides zero additional useable outputs. That entire volume of fuel is wasted in diluting the cylinder walls oil films, creating crankcase moisture and acid content and the resultant wear. Enter the SLATE. All of that is avoided and the ICE's advantage in range and made useful at reduced wear for your ICE! Kind'a cool.

Interesting pivot.

Most here now $4.29.

They are more than decent and about to go out of production I'm hearing as they are in direct competition to some of the other 'names' within the Goodyear brand. They only annoying trait they have is not uncommon to many brands. If let to sit for weeks they take a set and feel out of balance for a few miles until they return to normal. My mega-dollar Pirelli Scorpions did the same thing. Driven every day you never notice. Starfire Solarus HT is what is on the Pickup. Speed rating T. Dizzy is at the shop and I don't remember which is on that one.

I have these on two vehicles and love them. Pepper is one of them

Point of clarification on this graph. It is the life of the FLUID not the Transmission being graphed. Compare to his comments below the graph. Get it to the top of the graph and you can kill one in an afternoon.

Did all this valve cover work slow the oil consumption?

Do you know WHY the filter relief setting was increased to 22 psig? When the new system goes into the second stage the pump volume ramps up considerably. It was found that the 15 psi filter bypass setting put the filter in bypass on a warm engine when the second stage was activated. Raising the filter bypass setting forced the filter to do what it designed to do. Filter. Preventing debris from circulating during high load, high rpm operation. So next question is how did GM find this out? VLOM/lifter failures and a deep dive by Melling Corp. Last question. Is it required? Look at it like this; a motor may be equipped with a rev limiter. But it only works if the set point in reached. That 22 psig setting only matters if the pressure differential across the filter media exceeds 15 psig during normal warm operation. Second stage kicks in around 3000-3500 rpm. I can't answer your question because I don't know you and how you use the truck. But I think there is enough information here to let you decide for yourself.

Notes 7/18/2026 3,400 miles on this batch of Mobil 1 Euro 5W40 since the GDI pump replacement. Alcohol runs very clean when ring seal is tight and the sump isn't getting hosed with fuel. Checked oil level at fill up today as is my practice and grabbed a white Kleenex to look at the color. What color? I was going to change it but.....

Melling I believe is/was the OEM on the lifters who explored this problem some years ago. The white paper they generated on the topic indicated two items of note when I read it. 1.) They only fail on the switch. Prevent the switch, prevent the failure. 2.) The majority fail due to deposits messing up the timing of that switch. Anyway that's what I got from it. Mine have always been active, 195K+ now, and my oil maintenance is surgically clean. Of course this assumes good parts. That is no heat treat issue or machining flaws. I get comfortable that these issues are in the rearview mirror by about 30K. IMHO naturally.

Sunroof on Dizzy was like that. Fix it, break, fix it again, break.. Fix it again RTV it shut. Plastic gears. Love yards like that and they are few these days. Going to the mall before there were malls.

Good, well not so much the hail but rain, yea.

https://reotrucks.com/the-case The WHY, answered.

$4.05. down a dime from yesterday. Yo-Yo

https://reotrucks.com/