Why do oil related threads generate so much traffic? I like to refer people to Bob is the Oil guy when they come up because there are real oil experts on there and a huge legacy of threads on these small engine oil topics. But Someone beat me to it.
The Walmart Supertec is made by Warren oil. According to the folks on BITOG the folks there say they are a quality manufactuer and a quality product. Not my opinion but the folks there which is good enough for me.
I know people who only change the oil on thier small engines when the color gets very dark.. it could be years. My observation is they are surviving ok. They use auto oil not small engine oil.
My observation on SAE 30 vs SAE 10-w-30 is The latter burns more on warm days. Hence you have to add more and be more vigilant about checking it. Not a problem if you are good at doing that. Many people are not. This observation is also backed up by the B&S manuals I have read. Every engine failure I have seen is due to running on low oil or never changing the oil. Aside from connecting rod bolts loosening (mfg error).
I try to keep it simple. I dont worry about brand of oil in a small engine that I will change on an interval much-much more sooner than that on any car. I am not sure I would use oil made in China. Any recent SAE 30 or 10w-30 made in USA is good enough for me for a small engine. I have not seen any Chinese oil in the stores yet. Just a matter of time I assume.
And Briggs & Stratton tells you exactly this. For decades they have said that the recommended oil for their engines is an SAE 30 or HD 30. They say that a 10w30 may be used as a substitute but increased oil consumption may occur.
I always tell people it's not may occur but will occur.
However, as you stated, all the failures come from not having enough oil. You could probably put Wesson oil in the damn thing and it would still last as long as it's going to last as long as you kept enough oil in it.
People actually waste a lot of oil on lawn mowers simply because it makes them feel better.
The reality is that hardly anyone is ever going to notice a reduction of lifespan in their lawn mower due to lack of oil changes..
All the reduction in lifespan and the fairly instantaneous destruction is from not having enough oil in them and running them low on oil for long periods of time.
These are simply the facts! People don't want to acknowledge them because it makes them feel so much better to get that black oil out of their lawn mower.
Briggs & Stratton a few years ago just took the approach of if you can't beat them join them.
That's what this never needs oil changes just check and top off is all about.
That's what the majority of customers were doing anyways.
I'm in the lawn mower maintenance and repair business but I still think people waste a lot of money on having them over serviced every year and I can prove it by the math.
Soon, that's all going to change though because eventually the what I call junk wimpy battery mowers are going to outnumber the gasoline ones and eventually they will take over and dominate.
After this happens there will be no maintenance other than sharpening or replacing a blade.
But what there will be is very expensive battery replacements on a regular basis and some almost predictable pattern of how many batteries you can replace until you end up replacing the mower with a new one.
However I also predict after that honeymoon period is over and lots of people have buyers remorse or after 9 months or a year or so when their battery capacity is lower than it was for new which was already poor enough...they will want their old mowers back and we'll have to see if the industry will provide this for them or if this will create a huge demand for good used mowers.
I feel they will come out with some clever marketing with a slight redesign on the engine and call it something like generation 2 or whatever on the engines to get people, and the agencies etc over the fact that they're internal combustion engines somehow claiming their cleaner or whatever else which I don't think most of us care about it all anyways but they'll be giving us a nice powerful longer lasting gasoline engine.
Then, people will be able to go back to mowing their whole lawns as one event and blasting through tall overgrown grass with or without a discharge shoot on the side etc and use them as brush hogs as they done since their inception.
