Dino oil or Synthetic...

Been using Mobile1's 5W-30 Full Synthetic.

If it's good enough for the Merc, it's good enough for the truck

Just buy what you like. It's your money.

 

Completely untrue

 

I change my synthetic oil after 5000.

 

Synthetic is also more tolerant of high heat. If you are towing or spending a lot of time in triple digit temps, that would be a good reason to run synthetic. I don't do either of those, and 5K miles is about six months in my world. I will stick with dino.

qnyla lives in NM and has posted pictures of his truck with trailer in tow. Also, if you do the math, 300K miles in (almost?) seven years is more than 40K a year. If he's going 8-10K miles between changes, that comes out to a change about every three months. Synthetic is the only way to go in his situation.

Another factor in high mileage stories is time. Every high mileage Toyota I have ever seen had a lot of mileage put on in a short amount of time. I think that cold starts and stop and go driving is a far bigger factor in engine wear than what oil we are using. I've seen a couple 400K mile Toyotas and Nissans that were used as courier trucks. They were only six or seven years old. Whatever cheap oil and filter was available at the quick lube place was what they used. They got started up every morning, driven all day, then shut off.

I figure I am fighting a losing battle trying to get a truck to 300K miles when all I do with it is drive 5 miles, shut off, cool down, restart, drive 10 miles, etc. It's the starting up that kills them.

 

Also better cold-flow performance, and higher film retention. This better protects the engine on cold startups in any environment.
Cold startups, especially after sitting for a few days/weeks, are where most of your oil related wear is happening.

Synthetic "gets moving" better than conventional, and it "sticks" to surfaces better, rather than draining back into the pan after shutdown (yes, that's WAY oversimplified).

 

Have ta say that doesn't mean dino isn't appropriate though: modern spec. (SN/GF5) dino motor oils are quite good enough to handle the heat. Just change a little sooner...say, that old standby 3k interval...when stressing it with heavy load and high temps. The advantage of synthetic: you might run it to 7500 before changing (although 10k isn't out of the question!)

Running for short trips, not getting hot enough to burn off corrosive condensates is an engine killer even with synthetic oil. You might get a little more margin but you should change on a time interval (not mileage interval) that'll be the same regardless of oil type.

Cold flow is better but I wonder how serious that advantage really is? First: in clime's where it comes in to play don't people garage park and/or use engine heaters anyways? And no one spec's use of 40 or 50 weight oils anymore... I'm sure synth will be better than 20w at cold, but just how much?

Don't misunderstand me, I think synth is great and I use it. Pennzoil Ultra (I love the 10k intervals...one oil change a year!) But I do want people not to think it's like magic pixy dust for your engine and to recognize modern dino oils are very good and perfectly suitable for long motor life and hard work. Just make sure you maintain at proper intervals appropriate for useage and condition.

 

I asked this just to make sure that dino oil was okay to use as I had 6-quarts of the correct weight in the cabinet. Plan on syn. oil for the future changes but wanted to use what I had on hand first.

Thanks for the response.

Ray

 

next time go with the africanized variety, much more feisty and extend your oil change time to 20k miles

 

From what I've read (bobistheoilguy), mineral oil (aka "dino") is thin oil with coiled polymers that stretch out as the oil warms up to maintain viscosity. Synthetic oil is thick oil that doesn't get as thick as the temperature drops as a mineral oil would.

The problem with mineral oil with polymers, is that the polymers eventually "wear out", so the oil becomes thin with age (at operating temperature). This doesn't happen with synthetic oil.

The predominant reason why synthetic oil supports extended change intervals is because of this phenomenon. Add to that a greater additive package (I think they call that "base numbers", but I could be wrong) to suspend all the dirty nasty junk that you don't want to stick to your engine, and you have a long life oil.

Synthetic oil gets just as dirty as mineral oil, but it works better for longer intervals at more extreme temperatures.

 

I'm sold

 

I have never replaced/rebuilt any of my engines used what ever oil WalMart had on sale and the orange can of doom for a filter never have I sold a car or truck with less then 250K. Oil never wares out but it does get dirty and contaminated this is one of my issues with 10,000 mile oil changes no matter what you put in it.

 

I only disagree with the bolded part

 

He's technically correct.
The oil doesn't wear out, but the viscosity improvers do break down (what Shemp was talking about), and that causes the oil to thin.

With a bypass filtration system, you can keep the oil clean for 10,000.
Change the filters at 10k, add a quart to bring the level back up, and you have now replenished the additive package and, on a synthetic, brought the vicsosity improver level back to an acceptable level.


Now quickly does oil break down?
It depends on the engine.
DOHC engines with gear driven cams are very hard on oil.
Standard pushrod engines are very easy on oil... there is very little shearing action on the oil that you have with meshing gears.

Motorcycles with common transmissions/crankcases can be very hard on oil.

Here's my UOA results from my Vulcan 1600.
2000 miles, most of these oils sheared down from 50wt (20w50) to 30wt.
One of the synthetics was at that point at 1500 miles.
Only Mobil-1 V-Twin and Amsoil MCV remained in grade beyond 2000... and at 6000 miles were just dropping into the 40wt range.

Royal Purple was crap. Castrol GTX held up better.

http://personal.linkline.com/rlockyer/oil/oil.xls

 

Just FYI truck was bought on 7/27/06, so 48394 miles/yr based on the 294,415 miles on the truck. I regularly run 8-10k miles between drains and sometimes up to 15k between drains. I live at an altitude of 7000 ft, so cold starts all winter (no garage) and I am only 10 miles from work, so short trips. The weekends and trips are when I rack up the miles.

 

Inspirational for sure! At the rate I am going, I'd have to keep this truck until I'm 57 years old to hit 300K. I'm 33 now.

 

Nutella FTW

 

Dino oil...... \/\/

Oh pics are nto working

 

I have the 2.7 and I run Mobil 1 0w-20 I change my oil ever 3k or when it starts to get darker brown I rather change it early than have sludge problems in the long run. My truck has 35k and when I change my oil it's only very slightly darker than when I put it in. Just the way i like it clean! I might try 5k to see how the oil looks if it's still clean I may consider 5k changes

 

50,000 miles without an oil change /\ /\

Curious thing about that... ggms16 changing the oil regularly when he got the vehicle was probably the immediate cause as putting fresh oil into such a mess causes cooked on sludge to dislodge blocking an oil gallery or pickup screen.

Root cause, of course, is piss poor maintenance on part of first owner(s). The proper process with an engine like that is to take down the oil pan and clean the sludge out after running it with a de-gunker. He prolly had no idea it'd been so abused, though. Sad.

 

Yea that looks like 50k miles without an oil change.