Tasthree;
I'm glad you were able to find out about the oils you were considering, normally one does not have that ability, so I'm glad that my suggestion helped you some in that area.
As far as shelf life is concerned, our policy is basically stated for unopened containers, although in most cases, smaller size units such as quarts or gallons will probably exceed the 5 year life, swepco is very conservative and always goes on the side of safety and quality rather than just throwing a number out there. Opened containers, especially drums, kegs and pails will probably age faster than closed containers which we are talking about, and for the reasons you mentioned.
With regard to the 10w40 issue, it is not a well known fact that back in the mid-late 80's when GM was recommending 10w40, they started having a lot of problems in the top end of the engines. As it was told to me, at that time, they pulled approx 200 brands off the shelf and tested them and found that about 1% of the brands tested actually met the requirements of the api for meeting the specification of the 10w40 in place at the time. A "secret agreement" was made, as it was related to me that GM did not disclose the brands of the oil which failed, and from that point forward started recommending 10w30 (which a few years later then went to 5w30 for better fuel economy reasons). It was deemed that the culprit was mostly found to be that the viscosity index improver of the 10w40 did not hold up, and after awhile in service it could actually break down to the point that you were running on a 10wt oil. There is no-time given as to the longevity of the product and for me to make a statement on that, would not be wise. I do not believe that you will find this anywhere in writing as it was not officially disclosed by GM....but as you know, most other major oems followed suit with the same recommendations. We are now faced with some oils being made to serve as "0w20," and even as much as "0w50." those oil weights cannot be made with a straight mineral base, and must have at least a semi-synthetic formulation. Here again, this has been pressured by the epa for increased fuel economy, and the oems who recommend those weights have built their engines to meet those parameters.
Size wise, swepco is a very small company compared to the majors like chevron, shell, bp, etc. However the quality of the products has world renown and it is sold in over 70 countries areound the world. The amazing thing is that swepco does absolutely no advertising, but relies on it's sales force of independent representatives, such as myself to "get the word out" to people. A lot of salesmen, excuse me "salespersons" to be politically correct, do not get into the retail oriented line of business, such as in auto and truck repair shops, or auto parts stores, or in racing applications, and they stick primarily with industrial applications. I, and several others like myself find that the automotive end of the business is more steady as far as repeat orders are concerned providing they take the time to develop it in their locations. By developing it, it also means to teach the "dealer" the pros and cons of using it. In the case of myself when developing Jeff at ihon, it wasn't very long as he tried all of the products in his own equipment before he started using them in the shop and offering them for sale through the on-line store he has. I can assure you that his prices are well within reason, and are very much competitive with any other on-line company you might want to call up on your computer.
Because of the fact that swepco does not advertise as a corporation, you will not normally see products in a lot of areas, those that you do would be because there is a local salesman there who services the account.... These would normally be found in stores which carry high-performance products, and probably moreso to do with off-road hobbyists. If you had not heard of swepco before now, but saw it on the shelf of your local parts store, the first thing a "regular customer" would look at would be that the price is much higher than the other products on the shelf, without any explanation - and unfortunately most people "buy cheap."
thanks for your post, I hope that you and any other readers will be able to use the information offered and base the decisions accordingly.
