Hi all!

I see lots of recomendations to put "synthetic" fluids in my truck. Which ones? Are all sythetics pretty much good, or are some much better?

What fluids do you all recomend, and where, i.e. which tranny fluid, which oil, etc.

Thanks!

 

As long as you have a good quality oil, synthetic or dino, you're fine. Some folks swear by synthetic, some by dino fluid. If you are doing regular maintenance on your truck, the dino lubes are just fine. If you change the oil every 3K, you are wasting money on the synthetic stuff. If you go 7,500 miles, or you tow all the time, or you just generally beat the crap out the truck, then go with synthetic.

Only thing with this, is some differentials REQUIRE synthetic. Some of the clutch type LSD's need it or ones that have friction modifier added.

I'm a little **** with my truck and I use synthetic oil in the engine, but that's it.

 

I run synthetic in the race truck in the engine, and tranny only thats a big block spinning upwards of 8000rpm, and the synthetic tranny fluid helps keep it cooler but once again this is a race only vehicle. personally I don't run sythetic anything in my street trucks with the exception of the 2000 F250 I haev synthetic in the rearend but thats because that is what came factory. on differentials I look at it this way semi trucks run both and if your running dino oil in the diffs the change interval is 250,000 miles, and that has lot's bigger gears pulling upto 80,000lbs continuously, and if you run synthetic it doubles that change interval to 500,000 miles. now if your pickup is likely to see 250k miles within 2 yrs then by all means run synthetic otherwise your more likely to get it contaminated with water long before you wear out and need to change dino oil, and at $1.97/qt vs $8/qt you can do the math real fast.
now automatic trannies I do like synthetic (they should be changed more often than most people do anyway, and heat kills the fluid) synthetic has the affect of lowering your tranny temp in extreme application such as towing or racing, and anything you can do to help with the heat is a good idea. In my case it dropped the tranny temp by 15deg going from regular atf to synthetic when I raced.

 

Remember that when running syn. in the motor the oil may be able to go the distance but i wouldn't trust the filter to keep up with it.

 

You can use regular gear lube in the diff even if you have an LS. Just need to add friction modifier.

I am in the axles of my jeep so often, it would break the bank to run synthetic lube.