2001 Catera 141,000mi oil choice?

[OLAFF]

Hey fellas, I drive a 2001 Cadillac Catera (German Built) with a european spec L81 engine, fairly high compression.

Factory Spec oil 10w30 Summer, and 5w30 Winter.

Purchased the car at 60K, and switched to M1 following the factory specs for viscosity, then 15-20k later I started noticing puff of blue smoke on cold start ups.

Since then I have tried a few different oil seal additives but nothing seems to help. Tried Lucas and Barhdal... < both of which didnt seem to help the smoke. It did however improve the oil consumption a bit and also the power of the engine. Mind you the car dynoed at 195RWHP when its rated 200 factory... that was with Lucas and 5w30 M1.

It has just passed the 141,XXX mark and I was wondering what to do with my oil problem.
Its apparent that oil leaks from the intake/exhaust valve seals into the combustion chamber and as a result it burns off when the engine is started on cold days.

My 1 option is to use mineral or semi-synthetic oils or should I switch to a fully synthetic oil.

Lately its been running with 5Qts. Valvoline MaxLife and 1qt Lucas...
^ Thanks to this forum I am no longer a fan of Lucas and I plan on dumping the current oil fill for a new one but I hope that someone can guide me in the right direction.

What about Rotella? M1? and should I go 15w40 to slow down some of that leak?

 

[Nick R]

Looks like you got on the right food by getting away from the [censored] known as Lucas Oil stabilizer. If your burning oil you might want to stay away from a HDEO such as Rotella, the high Phosphorous wouldn't be that good for your cat. Sounds to me like your valve stem seals are leaking, you could try getting those fixed. In the meantime, you are running what I would recommend. Valvoline Maxlife 10w30 or 5w30. Don't run a heavier oil, it wouldn't really help- didn't with my cavalier which burns I think about 1qt/4k miles.

 

[crazyoildude]

high mileage oils do help in a lot of cases in a few ways..

 

[OLAFF]

I was looking forward to hearing any recommendations on the HDEOs but I guess I will stay away from them at this point.

I am a Walmart customer for life and I love the prices and the oil selection that they have, beats the local AutoZone any day... so my choices are as follows...

M1 < Expensive but possibly the best that they have.
Valvoline Syntetic or Semi-Syn High Mileage oil...
Possibly Pennzoil, or Quaker...soemthing something...
Maybe even ST brand... ?

Should I go Synthetic or Semi-Syn. I also put maybe 5000k on the car every 2-3months, 3K intervals seem a waste of oil.

Also Oil is black every time, is that a piston ring problem too?
What is ARX< Where do i find it?

 

[Nick R]

Oil color doesn't usually mean anything. Don't worry about Auto-RX, it isn't worth the price. I would go with either the Valvoline Maxlife Semi Syn, or the Pennzoil Platinum. Use whatever weight your owners manual states. You will be able to run 5-6k mile OCI with no issues. At 144k miles, if you are consuming oil there probably isn't much you can do about it to stop it. Again, if you are getting puffs of smoke on startup, you could look into getting the valve stem seals replaced.

 

[DeeAgeaux]

Originally Posted By: Catera


What is ARX< Where do i find it?


You can only buy it at www.auto-rx.com

You can obviously read company material there.

Also look in the oil additive forum on this site.

Some love it,some hate it.

 

[OLAFF]

Spoke to a friend of mine who is a Seal engineer at Federal Mogul and he said the synthetic was what caused the problem in first place.

In his line of work he sees that happening often on older vehicles that have been using mineral oils on a regular basis.

His recommendation was to switch to mineral oils and wait another 20-30k and it will possibly go away, of course he was kidding.

Opening the engine to do that type of a valve job is out of the question, its not that big of an issue to me.

Oil consumption is roughly 1/2qt every 1500mi or so...
I would like to take the car to well over 200k if possible and I am trying to figure out the best oils to use...

spending 20$ vs 30$ on a oil change is not an issue, I want to make sure I am spending it on the right kind of oil.

So far M1 seems to be favorite to most, but the high millage oils seem just as good.

Car does see 6500RPM runs on a regular basis, and cold starts are at least 2-3 times a day...

 

[Nick R]

Well if you want to keep it that long, this is my recommendation. Do 2- 4k mile runs of PP to try to clean out any junk, then run syn/syn blend oil of your choice for 6k mile runs, and you'll be set.

 

[silverrat]

Originally Posted By: rudolphna
Oil color doesn't usually mean anything.


Didn't you once say oil color being dark is good because it's cleaning properly?

"If it's jet black it probably means it's cleaning your engine which is good."

 

[Nick R]

*Facepalm* Yes I did. What I mean was, oil colour is a poor indicator of it's condition.

 

[OLAFF]

My dad's Mercury Monterey running MotorCraft 5W-20 always has the oil looking like new when you drain it, and he goes only 3000k miles.

Mine gets dirty almost after the first 1000mi, and I think its probably due to either a [censored] PCV System or a blow-by from the pistons...

I have spent countless hours searching and reading about oils and to this day I cant seem to figure out what I should be looking for in a oil.

Can someone sum up what additives are needed for a good oil, or which oil has the stuff that works?

Some say Moly, Boron, and ZDDP stuff is good, but phosphorus is bad for catalytic converters?

Any other metals I should be looking at?

I keep reading the VOAs trying to make out the various additives and what they do for you but its hard to compare hundreds of reports and know what is what.

Is there a sticky somewhere explaining all of them?

 

[Nick R]

You could pretty much run any oil with confidence. Additives for oil, you have a couple basic categories. Anti-Wear, and dispersant/anti foaming (cleaning) ZDDP, Moly, and boron fall under the anti wear category. ZDDP is historically very very good at it, but high levels of phosphorous form ash that plugs up catalytic converters. This is the reason for API Specs. The newer SM spec requires lower ZDDP than the older SJ to lower emissions. Moly and boron are the new big thing, they tend to plate metal surfaces so they slide easier without wearing.

Calcium, magnesium, sodium fall under the disperant/cleaning category. In most oils, calcium is the dominant additive here, though some oils (Royal purple comes to mind) use magnesium here in large quantities. Basically what these do is prevent the oil from foaming, and clean sludge and other junk.

In UOA, Iron, Copper, Lead, and aluminum are the primary wear metals. Iron and aluminum comes mainly from cylinder and piston wear, while lead and copper are primarily bearing wear metals.

Silicon tends to be dirt in the oil, or in new engines it can be leftover grit from metal parts that were casted using the sand-cast method. Sodium while sometimes used as an anti dispersant can also signal presence of anti freeze in the oil from a bad head gasket, warped head etc.

Hope this helps.

 

[OLAFF]

Originally Posted By: rudolphna
You could pretty much run any oil with confidence. Additives for oil, you have a couple basic categories. Anti-Wear, and dispersant/anti foaming (cleaning) ZDDP, Moly, and boron fall under the anti wear category. ZDDP is historically very very good at it, but high levels of phosphorous form ash that plugs up catalytic converters. This is the reason for API Specs. The newer SM spec requires lower ZDDP than the older SJ to lower emissions. Moly and boron are the new big thing, they tend to plate metal surfaces so they slide easier without wearing.

Calcium, magnesium, sodium fall under the disperant/cleaning category. In most oils, calcium is the dominant additive here, though some oils (Royal purple comes to mind) use magnesium here in large quantities. Basically what these do is prevent the oil from foaming, and clean sludge and other junk.

In UOA, Iron, Copper, Lead, and aluminum are the primary wear metals. Iron and aluminum comes mainly from cylinder and piston wear, while lead and copper are primarily bearing wear metals.

Silicon tends to be dirt in the oil, or in new engines it can be leftover grit from metal parts that were casted using the sand-cast method. Sodium while sometimes used as an anti dispersant can also signal presence of anti freeze in the oil from a bad head gasket, warped head etc.

Hope this helps.


Well to sum it up, thats exactly what I was looking for, this should make reading those VOA charts much easier.

I will be stopping by Walmart tomorrow to take a better look at whats on the shelf.

I will try to find that GC (German Castrol) too and see how much that stuff costs.

Thanks for all the info guys.

 

[Nick R]

No problem. Some advice though, when you are looking for GC you are looking for regular Edge/Syntec bottles. What you are looking for is on the back it will say "Made in Germany" which identifies it as GC. Oh, unless they carry motorcraft/ACDelco filters for your application, stick to a PureONE or NAPA Gold filter from an Auto parts store.

 

[1999nick]

My number one recommendation would be to use either Mobil 1 5W30 or Mobil 1 10W30 in the High Mileage formulation. It has the higher antiwear additives and higher level of cleaning additives. I have just completed a 9117 mile one year run of the 10W30 in my 2005 Nissan Pathfinder, and it only consumed about one third of a quart. .

When Mobil 1 is recommended, remember that there are about 20 different weights and formulations of Mobil 1. Your results might depend on you choosing the right one for your application.

 

[Durango]

In your case I'd have the engine flushed annualy and try using a the same synthetic (Mobil 1 10w30) and see what happens. Consider using a 10W year round and don't change during the winter months.

Don't use anymore oil additives as it's just a waste of money and besides with your car at 141K that's not bad mileage now a days.

 

[coffee]

I would personally use MaxLife 5w30 and be content as it will probably help the best overall after a few OCI's of 5k.

 

[38sho]

you really aren't loosing that much oil so I wouldn't worry about


especially when you consider the alternative to actually fix your problem

I also have to agree about oil consumptions and not switching up to a thicker oil. My car burns oil the same wether its 5w30, 0w-30, straight 30, 20w-50..... it holds no grudge and burns them all!

so I might as well use an oil that actually does the job it was intended to do, and not pick an oil to use just because it will quiet it down or might help a smoking problem, while not providing as good of lubrication as possible to your motor.



BTW u putting down 195whp stock? through an automatic transmission(4L30E?)

ever run it in the 1/4?

they always felt slow to me, but thats about the peak whp my car makes stock, maybe my engine has a much broader power curve(its known for that), maybe the catera is heavier, maybe the gearing, who knows.... but if they weren't such a quirky car and felt a little faster, I'd really like those cars, they handle pretty [censored] good! I'd really like it if it were available with a manual trans...

happy motoring!

 

[OLAFF]

Just picked up Mobil 1 High Mileage 10w30 for 22$/5QT. I will be replacing the oil in the car with that in the next few days, its almost where the semi-syn Valvoine is price-wise.
Got a bottle of MMO too try in the fuel system as well.

As far as the Catera goes, its a heavy car, pushing the scales at 3900lbs, and with driver and some equipment its easily topping 4200lbs...
The engine is basically stock with exception of polished TB, KN Filter and a frontal intake scoop forcing cold air into the stock air box.
Car also has a Cat-Back Steinmetz exhaust and we took it to a few different dynos as the mods were being added, and we watched the power climb from 181 to 195...
The 181 was stock... then exhaust and intake pushed to to 190... and finaly with some Lucas and throtle body polishing... we pulled a 195.

Stock is rated at 200hp at the flywheel.
Most pre99 Cateras dyno in the 160-170 range so my car is surprisingly powerful, perhaps because it has Coil on Plug ignition, Drive by Wire with twin throttle bodies, and fully functioning multi ram air injection.
The exhaust did the biggest improvement, its running open cherry bombs and a Steinmetz straight through resonator...

In the future I will be trying different mufflers and also a X pipe, with some more intake modifications to push it over 200hp.

It returns an average 17mpg city and 23mpg highway.
In stock form it was fairly slow car but with the mods I have and a light set of wheels its quite quick on its feet, and the runs from 80-110mph are insane... The torque peaks at 3200rpm and stays flat all the way to the red line.

 

[wolfc70]

I have the L81 in my 2003 Saturn L300 and used German Castrol with excellent results(now running AMSOIL Signature Series). Mine has 75k miles on it and uses no oil on a 10k interval, so going though a quart every 1.5k miles is abnormal. A friend of mine had a 1998 Catera, and his made it to 200k with no real major issues, other than the known production issues with that engine. Your fuel mileage seems rather low too. My L300 will get over 30 mpg on the highway, and my buddies Catera would get 28 mpg on the highway. Have you replaced the o2 sensors and checked the MAF? The KN filter does not usually play well with the MAF on these engines. Mine thew a MAF DTC in less than 1000 miles after installing a KN filter. The oil from the filter coats the MAF and skews the readings.

I would run a good quality synthetic and run a decent filter and see if your oil consumption gets better. Also try and refrain from running the car hard for awhile, if it gets better, your driving style might be the cause. And never ever run this engine hard when cold, this will cause lots of damage and cause tons of blow by.