102,000 miles, regular or high mileage oil? grade?

[Camu Mahubah]

Do try a high mileage oil and report back. Check your pcv and replace if needed. What brand of oil do you like, you see most have a high milege formula, so go ahead see if it uses less between changes. Trying a different brand or formula is part of the fun of being a bitoger...

 

[ziggy]

Okay, will do all Thanks for al the TERRIFIC input!!! Well, i normaly change my pcv valve every 2 years, in which case ,i have about, 12,000 miles or a little more. The only brand i know for sure my car absolutely LOVES!! is Supertech 5w30. It runs like a champ and really wants to mvoe aroudn with it in thier! Ive used SO many different brands over the years, and my neon loved the supertech.. For some reason, it hated valvoline durablend.... the car shaked n shattered with it in, 5w30... changed to another brand, and ran fine.,
Picky car lol.

 

[daemonite]

I had good luck with supertech oil, they have good filters too. use that combo and be happy then if you car runs so well on it.

 

[loud800]

It's everybody's opinion on when to change oil so that is a rough argument to get into. Some are old school and wont take the chance of sludging up their motors due to not looking at add packs, but whatching the flash point drop thru making it easier for the engine to turn the oil into sludge. Say what you want, but I would definatly buy a used car from somebody who changed their oil every 2,000 miles compared to 5 or 6.

 

[Gene K]

SA (Oil without an additive package) is good for rougly 1600 mi with late 1920's engine machining.

Modern SM oil will go at least 3000 mi under any reasonable condition. That said I would get a $10-20 Used Oil Analsis done on that engine before I changed ANYTHING I was doing. Why? Because the Neon is notorious for leaking head gaskets. Coolant in oil will wear out an engine very rapidly.

After you know it does not have a leaking head gasket 6 month changes (3000 - 4000 mi OCI) on whatever SM GF-4 Rated Oil is cheapest will be fine.

Or yearly changes on a quality synthetic.

The engine will outlive the rest of the car as long as the head gasket holds.

 

[Challenger71]

ziggy, I'm using Maxlife Synthetic 5w30 in my 96 Neon and approacing the next OCI-so far it's a superb oil. It would be difficult to try and top this oil and I wholeheartedly recommend it to you. BTW, lost no oil in the process whereas previous to I was burning off about 1/2qt within 5k. Go for it.

 

[Pat in Kentuckiana]

ziggy,
Not to scare you, but I'd check closely to see if you have a head gasket that's leaking. My wife's '98 Neon's head gasket started leaking at 78K miles. I did some research and that engine's gasket design was about as predictable to fail as the sun's tendency to set in the west.

At that point she wanted to unload it, so we traded it in on a new '04 Corolla. I threw some 20w-50 in it on the day we traded it and cleaned the underside pretty well to hide the evidence. They gave us $2800 for it which was well above trade-in value. So we kinda got to stick to the man on that one.

 

[glenncof]

Wait. Rust will kill the car value before the engine does with any reasonable oil maintenace. 200-300K miles...not if you drive in the winter in New England.

 

[glenncof]

Quote:

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Extended guards are good quality, the orange ones are the bad ones.

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I really like the Extended Guard media for long drains, the problem is the um rating is the same as the orange ones. At least that is what I found from FRAM website.

The Tough Guard has a great um rating but uses the cardboard end caps. I would use this for 5-6K OCI at the right price.

 

[Triple_Se7en]

Best Bet?... avoid the Fram label. Use your money more wisely.