About Oil Manual
Oil Manual is an independent reference that explains motor oil viscosity and specifications in plain English — so you can understand the right oil for your car before you buy anything. We are not an oil brand, a retailer, or a service chain. That independence is the whole point.
- Owner's manual first
- The exact vehicle manual is the final authority.
- Grade and specification
- Both requirements are checked separately.
- Sources and corrections
- Primary evidence, checked dates, and a public correction path.
Why this site exists
Almost everyone answering "what oil should I use?" is selling something — brands sell one product, retailers sell a cart, shops sell labor. The only neutral voices are scattered forum threads. We turn that scattered knowledge into one clear, structured, cited answer per question, always pointing you back to your owner's manual.
What we do — and don't do
- We explain what viscosity grades and specifications (API, ILSAC, ACEA, dexos, OEM approvals) mean.
- We compare grades neutrally and label substitution risk honestly.
- We always anchor recommendations to the owner's manual and OEM specification.
- We do not tell you one brand is "best" without criteria, and we never let a payout change a recommendation.
How we make money
Right now, we don't — the site is in its early, education-first phase with no ads and no affiliate links. In the future we may earn a commission when you buy oil, filters, or book a service through links on the site. When that happens it will be clearly disclosed, recommendations will still follow the OEM specification (not commission), and we'll show non-affiliate equivalents. See our editorial policy.
Accuracy & review
Our content is written to be conservative and manual-first. Car-specific data is sourced and confidence-rated (see our methodology and sources), and dated when verified. No named professional reviewer has signed off this material yet.
How this reference is produced
This site is written with AI assistance and maintained by a fixed editorial system rather than by a newsroom of individual authors. We would rather say that plainly than let you assume otherwise, so here is exactly what that means in practice.
This reference uses AI-assisted writing and corrections. Local preflight checks cover content structure, freshness, translations, types and rendered SEO. The deployment build does not itself run every preflight check. A freshness date records a content revision, not professional review. Source-linked passages are identified separately; professional and native-language review remain pending. Vehicle records stay provisional and noindex until the required source and human review gates are met.
Accountability is therefore organizational: mistakes are ours, and correcting them is a published process, not a favor. If something on a page is wrong, the corrections page routes it to review, and the freshness dashboard shows which entries are current and which are overdue. Our editorial policy sets out the rules the system enforces.