Home Forums Gear Hunting Trucks and Four-Wheel Drives Anybody Else Think Like This????

Been a diesel / farm equipment mechanic for years, and do alot of repair work locally, as a sideline. People always ask me for my take on synthetic engine oil. I personally do not have any problem with it, or the protection it provides.

My dislike is that it takes away the excuse to "get under" your vehicle every 5K or so. How many times have you spotted "something else" while changing oil? Maybe an annoyance, maybe a potential reliability issue, or maybe even a safety issue, like tie rod ends ready to fall apart?

Just curious to see if anyone else follows my train of thought?
Andy

That is an excellent point. I also try to keep a clean engine bay for the same reason. I started using Simple Green a couple of years ago because it is supposed to be gentler on the paint, not etching aluminum, and biodegradable.

I do most of my own work, but I would always make sure the car was a clean as possible when I would take it in for warranty work. I think more potential problems are spotted as you suggest and the mechanics "enjoy" working on my vehicle a little more.

Synthetic oil is a waste of money for most people in my opinion. I'll agree that it is slightly better than most dino oil, but I'll argue that the extra protection does nothing for 99.9% of the population. The average vehicle owner keeps their vehicles for less than 100,000 miles. Any dino oil changed regularly will provide plenty of protection to keep an engine running to 300,000+ miles. In the time that most owners keep their vehicles, dino oil will do just as well as synthetics at a cheaper price. If you're trying to run extended change intervals then all the benefits of synthetic go away, I'll take clean dino oil over dirty synthetic any day. The only real reason to run synthetic is if the maker requires it or in an extremely cold climate, there the lower pour point does provide an advantage.

No one is going to have an oil related failure with a modern engine running dino oil in the first 300,000 or so miles. Run synthetic if you want to, but you're just throwing away money, it's not actually providing you any benefit when you think about it.

I agree that the synthetic oill is overkill for most applications, I don't use the straight synthetic stuff, but do run the synthetic blend as reccomended by Ford in their newer machines, and a few other applications where I feel extra protection is needed.

Nobody pays me to work on my own stuff, so maybe I'm a bit lax about keeping the engine compartment clean, but I won't tolerate a leak either.

I still prefer the peace of mind a look underneath every 5k or so provides, at least to me!

Andy

I use synthetic oil and crawl under my truck every 10 thousand miles. That's ten times more often than anyone else I know.

If you've ever fired up your truck at 20 below, you'll understand why it's worth it.

I have a question for you guys. I have a 02 24v 5.9l cummins. I can get Mystic 15w50 synthetic blend for veeeeery cheap (free) is this oil too thick to run in my truck? I live in Texas and park in the shop at night if the climate matters.

Nope.Your good.Even 20w50 in your climate would work awesome.

thank you

I run synthetic on my 06 cummins. I haven't really reduced the need to crawl under the truck. It's just instead of changing the oil and filter at 7500, I just change the filter every 7500 and top off, and oil at 15k. I don't always get to plug the truck in, so on those occasional -20 or -30F days, the synthetic gives me piece of mind and eases the cold starts.

Cost wise it's pretty much a wash, mobil 1 diesel is about double the cost of delo 400, but asside from the 1 qt top off, I get double the life out of it.

Haven't seen any problems while doing oil changes or filter changes, my trucks barely broke in at 43k.