oil shelf life ?

[trevytrev]

Probably a silly question but does synthetic oil have a shelf life ?,

I have a couple of half full oil cans in the garage which have been there for a year or so and I'm not sure if they would be ok to use !...


Trev.

[z_chromozone]

IMO you should be ok, especially with synthetic because of the lower level of reactive impurities in the oil (amine and sulphur containing components) which may be subject to oxidative degradation. The majority of surfactant additives should also suffer very little degradation. A couple of hours in their proposed working environment (under pressure / shear / heat etc in an engine) would probably equate to years in an extended stability trial in the bottle at room temperature, if not decades.

Z