I haven't paid much attention to OIL since I stopped changing my own.
At a recent visit to WalMart, I saw; High-Mileage oils, synthetics, heavy duty oils, oils for "older vehicles", truck/SUV semi-synthetic oils, etc. etc.
All these specialty oils were a bit "pricier" than your everyday 10W30.
Advertising hype ? or real benefit ?
"" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
Synthetic oil reduces friction, provides more protection, and can increase gas mileage and is great to use in cold areas. If you care about keeping your car a long time, go for it. But sometimes people use synthetic and think they can get by only changing it every 10K miles! I'd rather use regular oil and change every 3K than use synthetic and change every 10K miles! Maybe using synthetic and changing every 5K miles is a great compromise. For ultimate protection, using synthetic and changing every 4K miles might be best. Also depends on how you drive your car or truck. If you town a lot, change the oil sooner.
Back in 1981 my company car was a full maintenance leased Olds Cutlass from Avis. They gave us coupon book that we could take to a dealer or major auto chain for service. I don't recall the frequency of oil changes, but they would only pay for a filter every other change. How cheap is that?
My commute to work is an easy 26 miles. In that distance. two stop signs, four traffic lights. I go with the 7500 mile interval.
Synthetic oil has great resistance to heat, cleanliness is a virtue of synthetic, since they don't burn up, they don't sludge up.
My advice, change oil if dirty, run new oil couple hundred miles check for dirt, if dirty, change again, new filter each time.
A clean engine lasts, a gritty one doesn't.
If your engine is clean, switch to synthetic for maximum heat resistance.
Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.
Ask the community — no account required