With the ever increasing range of synthetic oil, how do you know what synthetic oil is the best? Or even whether you should use regular or synthetic oil, for your application.

How to choose the right synthetic oil

The first step in choosing the right synthetic oil for the application is to be certain you’re comparing apples with apples - or more accurately don’t confuse “synthetic oil” with fully synthetic oil! As we’ve already seen in earlier posts, not all synthetic lubes are 100% synthetic.
Here’s a summary of the groups again:

• Groups I and II are universally referred to as mineral oils.
• Group III is the tricky collection. In the USA these are referred to as synthetic though they might be extremely refined or blended mineral oils.

When it comes to choosing the correct hydraulic oil for the application, the choice is often made based solely on price!

Unfortunately this is seldom the correct choice. To make matters worse: Most lubricant misspecifications don’t lead to sudden and catastrophic failure; rather, a misspecification shortens the life of the lubricated components and, thus, goes unnoticed.

With hydraulics, there are two primary considerations when choosing the correct hydraulic oil - the viscosity grade and the hydraulic oil type. These specifications are typically determined by the type of hydraulic pump employed in the system, operating temperature and the system's operating pressure.

But it doesn't stop there. Other items for

In previous articles we’ve spoken about the benefits of selecting the correct synthetic gear oil for the application; however this would be meaningless if we didn’t explain the importance of selecting the correct synthetic gear oil viscosity.

Selecting the Gear Oil Type
In order to select which type of gear oil to use in a gearbox, you must understand the gearbox’s mode of operation. The