oil for daily driving For a daily driver, I usually don’t recommend using racing oil unless you very frequently change your oil. For someone who may not be familiar with the mechanical workings of an engine, it sounds obvious. For someone who is a car enthusiast, this can seem questionable.
Racing oil like AMSOIL Dominator is designed to handle high heat levels. It provides an insane amount of wear protection under stress (both a great thing). Think about it, the RPMS during a race are very high. However, like most racing oil it was designed for racing and not daily driving. There is a saying, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too”. Racing oils are not designed for extended drain intervals. They are designed to protect your engine for the extreme demands of racing. Race car engines are generally broken down and inspected after a season and some cases after a couple races.
I can use my Toyota Tundra and Porsche 928 S4 as an example. My Toyota Tundra is my daily driver. The recommended oil change from Toyota is 10,000 miles. I use AMSOIL Signature Series 0W 20 Oil. This oil can be used up to 25,000 miles (depending on the driving conditions and engine type). I usually will take this oil to 15k miles because I drive at a slightly higher RPM than the average driver. This oil has excellent wear protection, corrosion prevention and great detergents. Now my Porsche 928 S4 is my project car / toy. I use Z-ROD 20W 50. The Z-ROD oil has a high zinc level to prevent engine wear especially on flat tappet engines. The Z-ROD also has very high corrosion prevention properties. This is awesome for a car that does not run every day. The oil itself is good for at least 2 years. From 2018 to 2020, I was unable to change my oil in my Porsche 928 S4 due to my work in the Military. When I removed the oil pan not to long ago, I noticed there was zero rust on the internals. I was actually surprised on how clean it was.
Now if I had used any racing oil for my Tundra, the wear protection would not be there for that many miles. No racing oil is really designed to prevent corrosion for cars sitting for over 2 years like my Porsche 928 S4 was. I have had friends who used racing oil in their vehicles but changed out the oil every one to two months.
If a vehicle’s recommended oil change interval was 10,000 miles and you wanted to use a racing oil. You would not get the wear protection near the 10,000 mile point. One way you could find out when you should change your oil is to do an oil analysis. You basically send in an oil sample to the lab and they would tell you if your engine wear amount is normal, below average or above average. They can even give you a good predication on how many miles the oil can handle.
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