"Call the technical department of an oil company (as a person, not a professional) and, if you get through to a human being, they will most likely have an inexperienced person read to you from a technical manual (hope they are reading the entry in the manual that relates to your situation)."
Tim, here are a couple of examples of my contacts with the technical departments of oil companies:
1. I have a 1971 Dodge van that I bought new. In about 1980 I began towing a small travel trailer with it a couple of times a month to off road motorcycle races on the Mojave desert of California. This extra load caused frequent U-joint wear out. I contacted the technical department at Quaker State. A lubrication engineer there recommended that I try synthetic grease. Then he explained that synthetic grease is not readily available at retail stores because its increased cost made it unattractive to retail buyers who make decisions based on price alone. To solve that problem, he transferred my call to a salesman who sent me a case of the stuff as a "sample" at no cost. I have not worn out a U-joint since then and the van now has over 340,000 miles on it.
2. My street rod has a Chevrolet Vega steering box. The last container of GM steering box grease was sold out of dealer inventories in 2006. I called the technical department at Shell Oil and spoke with a lubrication engineer there. He asked me for the GM specification of the GM grease (GM 4673M) and cross referenced it to a currently available Shell Oil product (Shell Alvania EP1 Grease MC 2041SIPA). Because that product is only sold in cases and 55 gallon drums and I'm only working on one steering box, I again benefitted from a no cost "sample". The sample exactly matched the mustard like viscosity of the original grease rather than the peanut butter like viscosity of chassis grease that professional mechanics sugested that I use in the Vega steering box.
So, as you can see my expreiences with people on the science side of automotive issues (as opposed to people on the maintenance and repair side who are often applying decades old information) has been very positive.
Those of us in highly technical professions (I'm an engineering geologist) realize that although we may have mastered one tiny subject, there is a huge body of ever changing knowledge in this world and nobody can possibly stay current on everything. I find it challenging to even stay curernt on developments in my own profession!
Other people's reliance on "folk remedies" is interesting to me but I have more confidence in information that is based on peer-reviewed science. These differences of opinion make this forum, and life in general, more interesting.
