Oil question 5.4
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Oil question 5.4
I am a proud new owner of a 5.4 with 244,000 miles. It runs great, but I am going to do my first oil change and I was considering 5w-30 instead of 20 since it is so high mileage and wanted some outside input. Also, I have never used synthetic, but i was also considering it. Would it benefit me at all to spend the extra money on synthetic or part synthetic? Thanks guys.
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Joined: Sep 2004
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From: Douglasville,GA
I am a proud new owner of a 5.4 with 244,000 miles. It runs great, but I am going to do my first oil change and I was considering 5w-30 instead of 20 since it is so high mileage and wanted some outside input. Also, I have never used synthetic, but i was also considering it. Would it benefit me at all to spend the extra money on synthetic or part synthetic? Thanks guys.
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Joined: Mar 2011
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From: MN
I use full synthetic 5W-40 with 192,000. I switch to 5W-30 in the winter, both full syn. Smoother running, longer lasting less wear and tear on the engine. No difference in milage between the two. Mobil 1 or Shell Rotella T6 full syn. The latter is $19.99 a gal at Walmart. Then buy as many extra qts. as you need if yau have the remote oil filter. About 6.5 qts. and a NAPA Gold (WIX) filter!
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Just run the oil specified in the manual. The high mileage really doesn't affect the tolerances in the engine to the extent that you might think. The most important parts of the engine are the bearings. If you were to pull the engine apart and measure it, it would basically have the same clearances it did when it was new. The lifter and rings will undergo some wear, but all a heavier oil will do is slightly slow down any leaks, but it will also not lubricate as well, especially at startup (sure your startup number is the same, but your actually startup viscosity is never the posted number, its somewhere between the two values), and so I see no real reason to ever use an oil other than what the manufacturer specifies.
For what its worth, 90% of all synthetics sold on the market are not synthetics. Sure our government redefined what synthetic means, but the governments definition does not have anything to do with lubrication properties or durability of the oil. Real synthetics have much better lubrication qualities than any conventional oil.
Castrol, Mobil1, Pennzoil, Valvoline, Quaker State, Rotella, etc. are not real synthetics, they are altered conventional oils. The process they use is to partially crack and reshape existing oil molecules to control the shape and quality of the oils. By the governments definition, these are synthetic oils because the end result is an oil that is different from the ones you started with. True synthetic oils more fully crack and then reassemble the oils (not reshape) into molecules that do not exist in nature. This is the original definition of synthetic oils. Only one US manufacture makes a true synthetic base stock, and that is Chevron. Several companies buy the Chevron base to make their own finished synthetic oil blends. Amsoil, Royal Purple, Redline, and Joe Gibbs are all true synthetic oils, and when you compare their longevity, lubriscosity, and wear protection to conventional oils by way of UOA (used oil analysis) there is really no comparison. I just change the oil in my primary van. I put it in at a little past 150,000 miles, and changed it a little past 175,000. The initial appearance is the oil is slightly darkened but still highly transparent. The oil can be analyzed to determine how much engine wear has occurred over that 25,000 mile period i.e. In my experience, the results of such test reveal that not only is this oil protecting the engine over very extended oil change intervals, but that there is less engine wear occurring than with conventional oils. This approach saves me money, instead of spending money on 5 quarts of oil every 3,000 - 5,000 miles along with a new oil filter at $14.48 plus $4.21 for a filter for 5 quarts ($2.89 per quart) which translates to $0.00623 additional operating cost per mile in oil alone, if you do your own oil change with a conventional oil. For me to run at extended intervals with better engine protection, it costs me $40 for 5 quarts of Royal Purple $8.42 in filters (one when I do the change, then the filter gets changed again after about 12,000 miles), plus another quart of oil when I change the filter and to accommodate the 1 quart I loose every 10,000 miles (my engine is very tight and in excellent condition, not an oil burner) so I go through a total of 7 quarts every oil change period or $57.16 in oil plus the oil filters, which is a total of $65.58 per 25,000 miles or $0.00262346666667 per mile. That is about 1/3 the cost of using conventional oil or snake oil synthetics. And as evidenced by the fact that my 175,000 mile engine only uses one quart of oil even 10,000 miles, it is obviously reducing engine wear and making my engine last longer. UOA confirms this conclusion. In addition, because I change out my oil less frequently, that is less used oil to deal with, which in turn is more environmentally friendly. And I get less downtime with going and getting oil changes and having to run to the parts store to dump used oil
Do I get better gas mileage? Thats hard to say, the type of driving I do makes it really hard to determine such things. I do track my mileage, but there are just way to many factors and variables that wildly affect my mileage, and so any improvement of decrease is hard to determine, and it is even harder to say what caused the change.
In any case, and I'm not saying you should switch your oil from conventional to synthetic, just something to consider. Stick with the oil the manufacture recommends, if the owners manual calls for 5W20, then unless you have a very good reason to change it, leave it at that.
For what its worth, 90% of all synthetics sold on the market are not synthetics. Sure our government redefined what synthetic means, but the governments definition does not have anything to do with lubrication properties or durability of the oil. Real synthetics have much better lubrication qualities than any conventional oil.
Castrol, Mobil1, Pennzoil, Valvoline, Quaker State, Rotella, etc. are not real synthetics, they are altered conventional oils. The process they use is to partially crack and reshape existing oil molecules to control the shape and quality of the oils. By the governments definition, these are synthetic oils because the end result is an oil that is different from the ones you started with. True synthetic oils more fully crack and then reassemble the oils (not reshape) into molecules that do not exist in nature. This is the original definition of synthetic oils. Only one US manufacture makes a true synthetic base stock, and that is Chevron. Several companies buy the Chevron base to make their own finished synthetic oil blends. Amsoil, Royal Purple, Redline, and Joe Gibbs are all true synthetic oils, and when you compare their longevity, lubriscosity, and wear protection to conventional oils by way of UOA (used oil analysis) there is really no comparison. I just change the oil in my primary van. I put it in at a little past 150,000 miles, and changed it a little past 175,000. The initial appearance is the oil is slightly darkened but still highly transparent. The oil can be analyzed to determine how much engine wear has occurred over that 25,000 mile period i.e. In my experience, the results of such test reveal that not only is this oil protecting the engine over very extended oil change intervals, but that there is less engine wear occurring than with conventional oils. This approach saves me money, instead of spending money on 5 quarts of oil every 3,000 - 5,000 miles along with a new oil filter at $14.48 plus $4.21 for a filter for 5 quarts ($2.89 per quart) which translates to $0.00623 additional operating cost per mile in oil alone, if you do your own oil change with a conventional oil. For me to run at extended intervals with better engine protection, it costs me $40 for 5 quarts of Royal Purple $8.42 in filters (one when I do the change, then the filter gets changed again after about 12,000 miles), plus another quart of oil when I change the filter and to accommodate the 1 quart I loose every 10,000 miles (my engine is very tight and in excellent condition, not an oil burner) so I go through a total of 7 quarts every oil change period or $57.16 in oil plus the oil filters, which is a total of $65.58 per 25,000 miles or $0.00262346666667 per mile. That is about 1/3 the cost of using conventional oil or snake oil synthetics. And as evidenced by the fact that my 175,000 mile engine only uses one quart of oil even 10,000 miles, it is obviously reducing engine wear and making my engine last longer. UOA confirms this conclusion. In addition, because I change out my oil less frequently, that is less used oil to deal with, which in turn is more environmentally friendly. And I get less downtime with going and getting oil changes and having to run to the parts store to dump used oil
Do I get better gas mileage? Thats hard to say, the type of driving I do makes it really hard to determine such things. I do track my mileage, but there are just way to many factors and variables that wildly affect my mileage, and so any improvement of decrease is hard to determine, and it is even harder to say what caused the change.
In any case, and I'm not saying you should switch your oil from conventional to synthetic, just something to consider. Stick with the oil the manufacture recommends, if the owners manual calls for 5W20, then unless you have a very good reason to change it, leave it at that.
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