Keep toilet paper in the bathroom

Friday, July 13, 2007

Dear Tom and Ray: While I was attending the University of Oklahoma in 1960, a study was done by the petroleum engineering department. The question was: Is draining oil from a vehicle necessary? They worked with White Trucking Co. and tested their theory on long-haul trucks. Using only a "toilet paper" filter and only adding oil, they ran one set of trucks against ones that received oil and filter changes for 100,000 miles. The results showed no significant wear differences between the two. They also concluded that the oil in the no-change vehicle was "stronger," because the weak molecules in the oil broke down and evaporated away. This study was going on at about the time that the Conoco Oil company was working on biofuel and had developed a plant in Bartlesville, Okla. But then both the study and the plant were suddenly gone, and I never heard any more. What is your take on the oil-change theory?

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