Recent content by jaj

Did you top up with a different brand of oil at some point? MC 5w-50 has (in order to meet the Ford spec) less than 800 ppm of phosphorus. You're reading elevated phosphorus and zinc.

The owner's manual says change after 12 months or when the oil's used up by mileage, which is usually around 10,000 miles. The OLM implements those instructions, so it'll time out after 12 months even if you don't start the engine again after a change.

I went through the same range of thoughts and ended up with a P410 workstation from Lenovo. It's a killer machine at a basic price.

Originally Posted By: PeterPolyol ...Esso lost favour with me when they were the last ones to implement desulfuring of the gasoline coming out of their Sarnia refinery back when... Well, that's fascinating. In Western Canada, their refinery was the first one to meet the new low sulfur...

About ten years ago, we had the choice of Husky, PetroCan and Chevron 94 here in Vancouver. Now it's just Chevron. The good news is that there's a big sticker on the Chevron pump that says "Ethanol Free" for the 94.

Originally Posted By: maxdustington ... off brand gasoline stations like Husky ... Husky is a major Canadian refiner, so it's not exactly "off brand". In fact, Husky was in the news yesterday when one of their refineries in the US had an explosion and fire.

I had a 500E for a while in the 90's and the trans fluid the dealership (yes, the MB owned dealership, not a franchise) was Dexron III-H, the last of the DexIII revisions. There are expensive "Euro" fluids available for these cars, but the gearbox works just fine with normal fluids. I don't...

If you watch how race drivers are taught, it's 9 and 3 with the wheel close enough to your chest that your elbows are bent 90 degrees. Two advantages for regular drivers - first, in a collision, an expanding steering wheel airbag can't slam your arms outwards into an obstacle or another person...

Smart lock probably isn't getting a lot of attention these days. Most new phones have fingerprint or facial unlock, so the need for the smart lock function just isn't there any more.

I owned two of those - a 1986 (the first one in town, actually) and a 1994. Both were very happy on dealer-installed 15w40. The dealer was a company store, owned by Mercedes-Benz directly, so they were sticklers for doing things the Mercedes way. These days, a good quality 0w40 or 5w40 would be...

Lines 26 to 30 on that report - OEM 5w20, M1 0w40, Pennz 5w30 and Redline 5w20 - are all my data. Tests were all Caterpillar lab.

It's an interesting set of results - there's a second forum page for the GT500 supercharged engines that require 5w-50. In that one there's endless bashing of Motorcraft oil, the oil that Ford uses for all of its vehicle testing, for shearing rapidly from a 50 wt to a 40 or even down to a high...

The most recent test shows most additives about 1.3x higher concentrations the previous sample, so perhaps the previous run had hold-over dilution from the oil that was in use before that.

It sounds like it's a product for government that's died a specific color to prevent theft.

I've had two near-misses: Back in the late 80's I had a VW Rabbit diesel, and one of our family members drove it home on a 35 mile highway trip with no coolant in it after a rad hose let go. The second was our family mini-van, a 1997 Grand Caravan with the 3.0 Mitsubishi V6 engine. Again, a...