I see, every industry is trying to sell "all natural" and "environmental friendly" products even if it is a bunch of BS. Most of the crap my wife buys is the "all natural", "organic" food and other products (potting soil, cleaners etc.). Double or triple the price and I highly doubt I will live any longer, I certainly dont feel any healthier and my poop looks the same. Sorry.

 

Look on the Mobil 1 website. They had one due to production issues related to hurricanes and another std promotion a few months back. $10 per 5 qt limit 2 is their typical offer. Also they have a point reward system. With my typical 5 changes per year on 3 cars, I wind up using about 37 qts per year so it adds up.

 

Thanks for the responses, I appreciate the thoughts. TBird, you are correct that after being used in an engine the oil is not environmentally safe any longer. While our scientists are working on a product that will address that issue, for the time being you must dispose of used G-Oil the same as petroleum products. Prior to being used, however, there is no danger from spilling our product in the environment. Additionally, producing G-Oil takes much less energy; no drilling, no transporting to refineries, no heating and processing crude oil up to 600 degrees to obtain motor oil.

Regarding availability of beef tallow, I must take exception. We have a plant in Guymon, Oklahoma. Within 50 miles of that plant, 50,000 head of cattle are processed EVERY DAY. We can produce 110 quarts of oil from each cow. Do the math and you will see we have a very abundant supply of tallow. Don't forget, that is only 50 miles from our plant. There are many other processing facilities in Illinois, Iowa, Florida, etc. As long as we keep eating steaks, burgers and chops, beef tallow is going to be readily available.

I would not use tallow on your wife's mashed potatos, in the unprocessed state it is not very attractive. Bull, munching on tallow at 2AM would require more than one bottle of wine.....

 

So I guess the cows just walk up to the bottles and jump right in? Here, Bossy Bossy!

 

Thanks for the laugh and great picture, Mikey! What I said was much less energy not "no energy" to produce. Good point, though..... Also, I forgot to mention that I lost 35 pounds on Obecalp - loved that sweet taste.

 

Trying to understand the benefit a bit better.

Isn't motor oil made from "byproducts" of oil refining and the demand for crude oil is driven by the need for gas, jet fuel to 1st order and perhaps natural gas and plastics. I believe one barrel provides about 1 qt of motor oil base stock. So even if the demand for motor oil from crude goes to zero due to bio-oil, the majority of the energy, drilling, transportation, environmental risk etc will still talk place. So what is the "real" incremental benefit if the market were to change over. Would there really be a savings in manufacturing energy, would the market find another use for the base stock, or it would be refined into another product?

On the other hand, I think the cows are almost 100% utilized. It isn't like the tallow is going into the landfill right now. If bio-motor oil gets 100% of the motor oil market, what industry would it effect and what would be more expensive to buy? For example, if more US corn is converted to fuel, the price of food goes up.

What is the differential cost of this technology, say compared to Mobil 1? Is there an industry shift (ig animal oil to veg oil for cooking) that makes tallow the cheaper base stock resulting in a lower priced product?

Is there a performance advantage? Is the tallow base stock more uniform in mol. weight like Mobil 1 or has a spread closer to the Shell synth made from mineral oil?

I understand the product is different - Is it a low cost alternative, a higher priced higher performance product, or a higher price green alternative? If the later, how green?

 

I for one sure hope that within a decade, this debate will be a moot point. We need safe, affordable, and widely available hydrogen fuel cell technology to wean us off our global crude oil fix....

 

Hydrogen cells are here today and would be very affordable in mass production. If you can find a way of making cheap hydrogen fuel the world will beat a path to your door.

As long as oil is cheap, the world will continue to use it. All other technologies will remain in the backwaters until then.

The moo-moo oil being flogged above is nothing more than a marketeer's wet dream of turning a low value waste byproduct into perceived liquid gold.

 

Any luck with an answer? I’m just curious if the dealership does anything out of the ordinary (any cabin filters in the car) that I wouldn’t normally do? I don’t mind paying the $75.00 for an oil change, but the dealership is 2.5-3.0 hours away and I’m not planning on being in the area for at least a few more months. I change my oil on my motorcycle (they want close to $100.00 and I’ve thought about calling the police department because they must be smoking crack to charge those prices…) and have on other cars many times.

 

Once you remove the undertray, the oil drain plug is easily removed from the front end, slightly to the passenger side here in the U.S. The oil filter is further back, more towards the drivers side here in the U.S., and you've got to crawl under the car a bit to access it. A set of the larger-size Rhino Ramps is the easiest and safest way to do this. Drive the front wheels up onto the Rhino Ramps, remove the hardware holding the undertray in place (nine bolts and screws in most cases), and have at it....

 

Actually, not yet...
I know how to change the cabin air filter (this is relatively easy to do). I was working on my Jag yesterday. I jacked it up to look under the car. I couldn't see the oil filter or the oil drain-bolt. Maybe I over-looked. It wasn't really obvious. If someone can assist with it, that would be great.

 

I'd say search on change oil but 3-letter words are ignored

Try search on:
change filter
or similar and see.

But get JTIS (you can search on that) as it's the workshop manual

 

Thanks, Jon89.
I missed your post. I should jack up the front more next time. I didn't have a lot of room under the car. I think I'll get the jack-stand as I can rotate the tires while changing the oil next time.

 

Wow, excellent questions and concise thoughts. I will try to be as eloquent in my responses.

First: You are correct that crude oil is also used for gasoline and other fuels. Crude oil contains hundreds of different types of hydrocarbons with different numbers of carbons all mixed together (C4-C80). Obviously you have to separate the different types to have anything useful. Distillation is necessary to separate the useful products - Oil for lubrication of engines contains more carbons than fuels and requires a higher temperature to be produced than gasoline or other fuels. Thus there is more energy expended to create petroleum based oils. If bio-based oils replaced petroleum (in theory) less energy would be used to simply distill the fuel and then stop the process. Natural gas, I believe, comes from different wells.

Second: The tallow is going into landfills. It was previously used to fry french fries and other goodies, but the scare from mad cow disease eliminated that as a use. It is still used in the production of soaps and candles, however.

Third: Difficult to predict the future of the various markets affected. At this point, tallow is relatively cheap - however, as with any commodity, once the value is realized the price will surely go up.

Fourth: The big difference is in the cost to create the base stock. Less energy is used to transform tallow into bio-based oil.

Fifth: The performance mimics the full synthetic products such as Mobil One. There is some colloquial evidence that using G-Oil increases mpg, but we have no statistics or studies to support that at this time.

Sixth: We are priced competitively with synthetic products. We are the green alternative to petroleum and the world's first and only non-petroleum based motor oil to achieve the API's SM rating.

Finally, it is up to the individual consumer to determine value. We feel that we have a great, environmentally friendly product that performs.

 

So, if you're using an otherwise useless, worthless base stock (tallow) that costs less to transport and consumes less energy to process, why is the finished product so expensive?

 

Again, Mikey, you're mis-reading what I said. Tallow is IN-expensive, not worthless. It is also not the only ingredient in the oil. Additionally, as a small company (certainly compared to giants like Exxon-Mobil) we do not enjoy the benefits of massive purchasing power or economies of scale. We do, however, like the giants, have to fund R&D, marketing and support. Finally, if our oil performs as well as Mobil One, why should we sell it cheaper?

 

You said the tallow was going to landfills- that sound 'worthless' to me.

The answer to your second point is obvious- it's for the same reason that dogs lick themselves.

I wouldn't pay a penny extra for any synthetic oil or any boutique oil as there are no demonstrable advantages for engines that do not require them by the OEMs. Jaguar engines do not require them.

 

One demonstable advantage would be less oil changes. If a full synthetic can last 3x longer than regular, it actually saves money in the long run, no?

 

Yes. Factory recommended oil change interval using dino oil is 10K miles/ 16K km. Would you leave synthetics/moojuice for triple that interval (30K m/48K km) just to break even? Not me.

 

I wouldn't run my Castrol 5W-30 conventional oil for the recommended 10,000-mile interval, regardless of what the Jaguar owners manual says. Running conventional oil that long could be asking for engine trouble (such as sludge or premature wear). I change it every 6,000 miles along with the oil filter....