Synthetic vs. reg oil

Could use some input, thanks.

I have a '95 Ford 1.9L, 4cyl. with 80k miles on it. Runs good. No oil consumption.

Have always used petro-based "regular" motor oil in it. Any benefit to, or cautions against, switching to a synthetic at this point?

Jeff

Reply to
Jeff
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Jeff,

A rather good question indeed. For my 2 cents, if your car / truck sees no severe duty like towing (4 cyl, doubtful) or slow operation in extreme climates, you probably won't benefit much from changing. There is no question in my mind that oils like Red Line or any of the syns from Castol, Mobil 1, Etc are good, but without a means to actually test something down the road to see if you actually DID benefit, you may be wasting your money.

I have heard some people say that changing to syn based oils will cause otherwise sound seals and gaskets to suddenly start leaking after changing over. I have never seen this myself in the vehicles I have done this to, but it seems to be a concern with some folks.

One thing is for sure, syn based oils are much tougher than dino oils in that they can take much more abuse, and still keep their qualities intact after many miles. If you think for piece of mind sake that you are doing your vehicle a good deed by changing, you probably are and in that case I would say go for it.

Rick

Reply to
RickA

|Could use some input, thanks. | |I have a '95 Ford 1.9L, 4cyl. with 80k miles on it. Runs good. No oil |consumption. | |Have always used petro-based "regular" motor oil in it. Any benefit to, |or cautions against, switching to a synthetic at this point?

That motor's still young, go for it. The engine will last longer. Rex in Fort Worth

Reply to
Rex B

I just switched on a car with 120k no leaks and i get a little better gas mileage. I do not have to change it as offen now so between that and using less gas it pays for it self.

Reply to
Joseph Fox

Arguments about seals and leaks aside, I wouldn't do it with the Escort because I don't think you need synthetic in an Escort. A US Escort is not exactly a high performance vehicle. Just use dyno and save your money.

Reply to
Jimmy

I have always used regular oil in my car engine but last month I decided to try synthetic oil to see just how good this oil really is. I drive alot and change the oil in my car every month. I did a flush of the old engine oil and installed a new oil filter, then filled it up with 4 litres of synthentic oil at a cost of around $25 cdn for the

4 litres of oil. I drove hard for a month and this is what I found. It had no noticable performance enhancment that I could notice, although it seemed to start easier in the really cold weather. One thing that I was really impressed with was the durabilty of the synthetic oil. There was no noticable varnishing or sludge buildup in the engine and the color of the oil was still clear after one month of hard driving. With regular oil in my car after the same period it would varnish the dip stick, build up sludge under the oil cap, and turned dark dark brown almost black. The durability of synthetic oil was impressive in my opinion. If it wasnt so expensive I would use it all the time, it's clearly better then regular oil IMO, but for the cost. Hope this helps.
Reply to
steve

Unfortunately, appearance of the oil does not necessarily say a lot for the properties or performance of the lubricating oil.

I, like you, hate to see sirupy black oil develop in my crankcase.

I am not particularly excited about synthetic oils, but neither do I dispute all the positive attention.

We really need laboratory quality proof, not advertising claims, and there is very little of that in circulation...

Reply to
HLS

There have been lots of people posting their oil analysis results on the web. Many of the synthetics and semi-synthetics seem to have yielded good results.

BTW - one of the most counterintuitive things I've heard of is that wear rates are higher with new motor oil compared to maybe 1,000 miles on the oil. Something about the anti-wear additives being activated as they oxidize.

I didn't know that mixing two 5W-30 oils with different detergent additives can yield 15W-40 oil because it causes thickening. Not that 15W-40 oil is necessarily bad in all cases. :-)

Reply to
y_p_w

It is contraintuitive to me too. I tend to suspect that the observed results are not being correctly interpreted.

Reply to
HLS

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