Which Motor Oil Brand Wins?
A head-to-head test of 2 motor oil options with the measured results for each. See how they ranked and watch the full test video.
Some figures on this page were transcribed from the test video and have not been independently re-verified. Treat the numbers as a close guide and watch the full video for the exact readings.
Bacon grease
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The measured results
Every number below is read straight from the test. Scroll sideways to see all measurements. Products are listed in the order they finished.
| Product | Lubricity/film strength test (bearing scoring on a lubricity tester) | Flowability at 150 F (pouring temperature used for the actual engine run) | Flowability at room temperature | 30 minute small engine run (combustion chamber/cylinder head condition) | Post-run engine wear check (filtered drained grease on a paper towel) | Crankcase/cylinder head temperature during the run | Post-run condition once cooled | 30 minute small engine run |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1Bacon grease | very little scoring on the bearing compared to 10W-30, described as having noticeably better film strength than 10W-30 conventional oil, by the narrator's account "by a long ways" | flows easily into the crankcase once heated to about 150 F, though this is described as a little warmer than strictly necessary to flow | thick and does not want to flow at room temperature, unlike the engine oil it was compared against in the flow test | cylinder head and combustion chamber came out remarkably clean, described as the cleanest the narrator has seen, with some of the bacon grease apparently getting past the piston rings and acting as a cleaner inside the combustion chamber | no metallic debris found, suggesting no obvious engine damage occurred during the test run | no exact temperature figures are ever spoken for either bacon grease or the 10W-30 baseline run, despite the narrator explicitly setting up a temperature probe and stating he would compare crankcase and cylinder head temperature between the two; only a qualitative note that the engine ran "a little bit warmer than usual" with bacon grease, attributed to a viscosity issue | turned into a sludge-like substance inside the engine, requiring several flushes to fully remove | not tested |
| 210W-30 conventional oil | showed noticeably more scoring on the bearing than bacon grease, the weaker performer of the two on this specific test | not tested | used as the baseline comparison in the flow test; flows more readily at room temperature than the thick, room-temperature bacon grease | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | used as this video's baseline reference run before switching to bacon grease; no cylinder head/combustion chamber cleanliness description or temperature figures were spoken for this baseline run specifically |
How it was tested
- lubricity/film strength test on a bench lubricity tester, comparing bearing wear/scoring between bacon grease and 10W-30
- 30 minute small engine run using bacon grease as the crankcase oil (87 octane gasoline with 10 percent ethanol), monitoring crankcase and cylinder head temperature via a probe inserted through the dipstick, versus a baseline 10W-30 run
- post-run inspection of the cylinder head/combustion chamber cleanliness and a filtered check of the drained bacon grease for metallic debris
- flowability comparison at 150 F (pouring temperature) and again at room temperature
Data notes and caveats
This is an April Fools-style myth-test/novelty video, not a real brand-vs-brand product showdown: bacon grease is tested as an emergency engine oil substitute against a generic 10W-30 conventional oil baseline, so isHeadToHead is false, format is myth-test, and no winner/runnerUp/budgetPick is forced onto either subject per the standing rule for method/myth-test videos. The video's central promised metric, comparative crankcase and cylinder head temperature between the bacon grease run and the 10W-30 baseline run, is set up on camera (a temperature probe is explicitly inserted) but no numeric readings for either oil are ever spoken in the transcript, only a qualitative note that the engine ran "a little bit warmer than usual" with bacon grease; this looks like an on-screen-only result and is logged to data/onscreen-only.txt, with confidence set to low accordingly. The narrator repeatedly and explicitly warns viewers not to actually use bacon grease as engine oil despite the surprisingly good film-strength and combustion-chamber-cleanliness results, citing post-cooling sludging and an oil-viscosity-related warming issue. The video description references an ongoing separate "SAE 5W-30 synthetic oil championship series" continuing the following week; that is a different video/series in this channel's catalog, not part of this video's own data.