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against all the rules - a great dealer and the oil is better

found a great dealer, chrysler, after getting seriously fleeced by the local mechanics, tried to give them business and boy did they give me the business. it's so bad it's funny. i'll spare you the details, like doing the same repairs twice! since on their dirty bulletin board they are selling 50 bullet drum magazines, i decided not to make a big confrontation, bit of discretion here with heavy caliber guns u know

anyway this great chrysler dealer, fabulous, actually inspected my vehicle, more than 10 year old minivan VOYAGER and found not a thing wrong with it, nothing, not even a burned out bulb, there was one burned bulb in the dash, and also honored some discount coupons, i still can't believe my luck i had already told them to leave the stickers on since they were good for another two months and i am not going to get away from a dealer, a big dealer, with a 10+ old minivan for the state inspection. i felt for sure it was going to be a failure, just how big a failure could i afford was the question. this is a rare first time i have ever passed an inspection without repairs usually it's gift time for the auto industry and i accept that.

in any case, i noticed that i did not use oil in 2000 miles before i was using what, maybe 1.5 quarts in 2000 miles which is not bad at all for car that has about 200,000 miles

but no oil usage and i even let the dipstick hang out on this hard to read dipstick leave it to chrysler to make even reading the dipstick an adventure

the dealer is using a semi-synthetic conoco 5W-30 which technically i would prefer for the V6 3.0 10W-30 regular oil always afraid the synthetics may do in the seals but something is working better would you not say - any big ideas on this?

now i did do the you know who oil analysis, blackstone labs and they said the oil i had been using was seemingly

5W-30, this was before going to the dealer. the report was pretty good although when i showed it to mechanics they get irritated with all the chemistry. probably info overflow. but i did some chemistry so it's cool.

now i am thinking, is it possible that my local mechanics did me wrong when i was trying to just be nice they really put in 10W-30 and since they lied to me about other things, probably lied to me about the oil? or maybe a combo of things. i put in some quarts of cheapo walmart's oil, forgive me, and that reprocessed canadian oil might really be closer 5W-10 after reprocessing?

in any case, this dealer has a nice TV room and free coffee and i found him on the click and clack brothers that everybody loves to hate here but they really helped me with their web site and advice yes they make mistakes, but the mistakes are honest ones

Reply to
Treeline
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The mechanics probably do not know what oil is used. Depending on were you live the place you went to probably had bulk oil in a large tank. The oil company comes and replaces the oil when needed. But in Canada and other cold climates, The oil company automatically changes from 10/30 in summer to 5/30 in winter. The mechanics are probably not told when this changes. You see the oil company has one truck with a single tank. So they only put in the one grade and drop off at all the shops at once. So the mechanic probably does not know, as the shipping slip is given to the manager, and he just puts it in the file cabinet. And If he is on a contract oil shipment, even the shipping slip does not show the grade of oil dropped off.

Reply to
David

Thanks for the answer. In this case, the mechanic who first changed the oil also owned the garage so he might have known since he was the only person there. His wife was a non-working but "licensed" mechanic and handled the paperwork but I think s/he knew what oil he was using. They were very nice, just far from me.

The oil from Walmart's was not their bulk but their own branded cheap quarts I would add myself.

I have never used Walmart's to actually change the oil. Although they are cheapest of all, the lines are long and the horror stories, well, you have to make sure the oil plug is on right.

So although the Walmart's quarts said "10W-30," I thought the oil itself might be thinned from being re-processed or re-cycled. I had read a little about Walmart 's and this seemed in line with their hard, bottom line. The oil is just too inexpensive to not be partly recycled, what $0.84 USD a quart?

The 5W-30 came from Blackstone Labs whose name I picked up in this newsgroup. They were surprised I said 10W-30 since they thought it was 5W-30 but they also said it was doing the job and keep at it.

The dealer specifically said semi-synthetic 5W-30 and apparently they got a very good deal by getting a large amount of the same type of oil.

In any "case" the semi-synthetic 5W-30 seems much better than whatever the previous regular oils were. Whether it's magic or what, I don't know. I'll just be happy for the time being.

But now I understand from your answer how it's not easy to know.

Reply to
Treeline

I'm generally not one to stand up for WalMart. In fact I have a bit of a hate on for the corporation - but their oil is actually one of the better oils available, made by Shell IIRC. Their filters are reasonable too- a LOT better than Fram.

Reply to
nospam.clare.nce

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