Which oil?

I agree with the good Dr. and Wally. In our daily drivers I use a full synthetic, changing the filter around 5k and oil and filter at 10k or so. The protection afforded at cold start is well worth the little added expense, not to mention the fact that I notice a bit better gas mileage. You can use dino, but changing every 3-5k is false economy, especially if you use crappy filters-like fram. In our germans(Porsche, BMW and Jetta), I use Mann filters. In everything else(Subaru, Montero, Prizm) I use a Wix. I have never seen ANY sludge build up in any of the cars, and other than the Jetta, all have well over 100k, with the BMW@250k! That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I ran full synthetic in the 22R Truck from 100K miles when we bought it. At 290K miles when I tore the motor down (timing chain), there was no sludge at all. The crank needed a light polish. 3 thousands of taper in the cylinders. I use Genuine Toyota filters now in everything, including the Esprit and the Harleys, both of which take the same filter as the 22R. minimac, you can get a genuine Toyota filter for that Prism for under five bucks at the Toyota dealer.

I have always had luck with fram, but I use the uper end ones, like the 7K mile one when using synthetic, and the tuff guard on normal cars.

With my ford, I used motorcraft filters, cause they were cheap and based the heavy test. They were heavier than frams, so they MUST be better. :-)

I generally stick to OE filters. You can usually buy them cheap in moderate quantity (3 to 6) from various online parts dealers.

A few years ago mustang and fast fords mag did a series of dyno tests and found an 11 hp gain switching to synth oil on a sbf that wasn't outragously overbuilt. Thats right I said 11hp! they were surprised too. I was a total doubter on synth oil in most applications before that, but that made me reconsider. I am still not using it, but I might some day.

A funny synth oil story: many years ago when I was young and alot dumber I used mobil 1 in my ford bronco that I had only had for a short time. I was adding a qt or more a week due to leaks (everything was leaking!) and smoking and I only drove about 150 miles a week! After a month I couldn't take it any more and started using cheap conventional oil. After the next oil change using cheap conventional oil the leaks all dried up and most of the smoking stopped! I drove the bronc for three more years, and only added 1 qt between oil changes.

I did use pj1 synth in my motorcycle and it held up to the wet clutch gearbox very well, and I could feel the diference in the clutch action using the synth oil, and I was a big improvement.

^^^That seams to be a common story with older synthetics, and the reason I have only put synthetic in to cars if we buy them with low miles on them. Fortunatly, the R/T just recieved a full rebuild on the engine, so my next oil change will be Syntech, not GTX. Plus we use the long life oil filters with synthetic.

I had second thoughts and went and returned the Gtx and got the Motorcraft synth blend. Is 5-6k miles a safe interval to go on this stuff?

It should be. My father usually goes about that far with blended oil, I think Penzoil usually..

ignorant wrote: the wally world stuff got high ratings by the people on www.bobistheoilguy.com Infact supertech filters are better than fram.

Hate to be that guy, but he talks up Schafer gear oil, who also happens to sponsor his site.

Lame.

any luck with lucas oil additive?