Oil shelf life

[volvolugnut]

Let's be realistic. Unless you completely drain and flush the old oil before adding new oil to your engine, you will have some contamination as soon as the new oil is added.
Oil stored in plastic bottles is unlikely to change much unless stored at extreme temperatures or open to the air. Oil stored in the old paper and steel cans may have changed some over time. Oil stored in steel barrels outside could have water leak inside and get contamination from inside rusting of the steel barrel.
volvolugnut

[BlackBart]

Wow that video is a blast from the past - do you remember poking holes in oil cans and looking for your funnel? When did the plastic jugs arrive?

There are Quakers in Pennsylvania..?

[FireFox31]

Thanks for the insights (and we'll placed nonsense). Now I'm curious about Blackstone analysis of various ages of unused oil. I have an ancient bottle of Esso oil so I'm curious about that too. Blackstone wouldn't have a baseline for it though.

It occurs to me that I don't know how old the new oil was before I bought it. Some power steering fluid bought from FCP had a manufacture date of one year before I bought it. I doubt the oil was sitting there long.

Now I feel kind of bad having recycled those cases of old unused oil. Had no idea how old they were and how long they'd been stored in that moldy basement.

[Krons]

One benefit of Volvo 6 quart sumps…with most oil jugs being 5 quarts these days that final quart is a great opportunity to use up that old oil.

Frankly if sealed and less than 10 years old I’d have no problem running a full sump of the properly spec’ed oil.