Alrighty then, time to hit the wild animal park (WalMart, cuz it's always packed) and compare prices...

 

It's Ford's standard oil and readily available at Walmart.

 

i wanna say it is about 3.50/qt here in SD.

It is actually cheaper than most of your brand name conventionals. I think quaker state might be a few pennies cheaper, but it is not a syn-blend.

If ya need 5w20, get the 5qt jug and save a few cents more per qt.

4 bucks for a filter sounds about right. dont remember, but they are cheaper than fram.

 

I bought 2 jugs of 5W-20 MC oil at wally world a couple of weeks ago and it was under $15.00 for a 5 qt jug.

 

Sounds about right.

If you frequent the people zoo often enough, you can catch some sales too. About 3 months ago, I bought 4 (all they had left) 5-qt jugs at $10.78 per jug.

 

I'm a firm believer in synthetic oil but I'll leave my comments on that for another day..
I would like to comment on your first oil change and why it's NOT a good idea to wait 5K miles if possible.

I had the opportunity to build a home for the head of research of Ethyl Oil a few years ago. His company is one of only 2 manufactures who make the additives for all the other oil companies to use in their oil and he brought up 2 important points.

1. The first couple of thousand miles is when a majority of the engine compopnents "wear" into eachother and therefore the greatest amount of particulate matter is generated. He reccomended the first oil change at no more than 2K miles. Keep in mind that no manuacturer uses a special "break in" oil today.

2. After the initial break in of the engine the second major wear event occurs on cold start up when the oil has drained into the crankcase and it takes several seconds for the oil to fully circulate. This is where synthetic oils which usually have lower W or winter ratings will circulate faster and minimize engine wear.

I run synthetic oils in all my vehicles and am happy. I also get slightly better fuel economy with it...

I guess if you're leasing your truck or don't plan on keeping it 100K+ miles it may be questionable but if you own it and plan on keeping it as I do it's a no brainer for me.

 

If you're planning on keeping your vehicle for a good while, get the green oil.

It's the best.

Welcome!

 

Not sure what the green oil is (Quaker State maybe?), but the guy with the million mile van at www.millionmilevan.com has well over 1.2 million miles on a 5.4 and seems to use regular Valvoline. I would say that this constitutes "keeping it for a while"...

Engines can last plenty long with a maintenance schedule that adheres to factory intervals for oil changes (or less if you want).

That said, I used full syn in my 4.6 E150 van for 30k or so miles because I got 24 quarts of Quaker State Torquepower 5W20 for 99 cents each. It is now back to Motorcraft syn blend and doing fine.

George

 

Got it. $15.87/5-qt jug at the local WalMart here = $3.17/qt.

Been using Royal Purple since that's what I put in my TT Z (it only takes 4 quarts), but I realize I definitely don't need that expensive an oil for my F150 with 7 quarts. With $4 filter that should put me at $26.22 per oil change.

 

I used Mobil1 5W-20 Extended performance synthetic oil in my Expy for 70K miles. I was averaging 19-20 on the highway. I've been using the MotorCraft 5W-20 Semi Syn ever since and I now have 84K on the clock and she still gets the same mileage.

I was all about the full synthetics until about a year ago. I started reading some reviews about the Mobil1 products that left me scratching my head and then the Ecoboost torture test came out. Ford beat the crap out of this truck for the equivalent of 170K miles using MC 5W-30 oil then they tore down the engine in front of God and country and revealed NO abnormal wear.

I'm not trying to change anyone's mind and these oil discussions tend to become fairly heated so I'll end here.

I switched back to MC oil and my wallet thanks me.

 

Thanks for the replys everyone.

 

You're very welcome sir.

 

By your definition of sythetic oil you forgot about Redline oil!!!!

Synthetic oil is a mixture of base stocks since one type isn't the holy grail. The Oil company's mix the various base stock's to meet the API standard and to be cost effective.

Having said this synthetics typically keep the engine cleaner and flows faster at lower start up temps, and keeps high temperature components (ie turbo bearings) cleaner as well.

 

To the OP be careful when selecting Royal Purple oil if that's the oil your going to use since most RP oil on the shelves is still API SL. RP has just come out with API SN (which is what your new Ford requires), but I don't think it's on the shelves yet.

 

I just found some Trop Artic Synthetic blend oil 10-30, 5-30, 5-20 at a farm store for 2.55/qt.

i have heard that the same maker for motorcraft also bottles the TropArtic, though, i have not made any attempts to verify this claim.

2.55/qt is pretty good ... knocks a buck per quart of the price of an DIY Oil change. If i find a 5 dollar bill laying on the ground, i pick it up.

these were new bottles marked SN service level.

any thoughts?