My step-dad has a 98 Eldorado with the 4.7 Northstar engine. He is seriously one of the worst people I have ever seen when it comes to car maintenece. He used to drive the car every day 1.5 miles to and from work (3 miles round trip) with the occasional highway trip (maybe once every 2 months or so). Despite my telling him that the oil needed to be changed extremely frequently, he would change it maybe once a year if that. Luckily his new truck has an OLM and I've gotten him to start following it (he used to ask me just to reset it when the message came on the dash but I refused, now he just asks me to change it). With the same driving habits he had with the Cadillac, the truck tells him to change it usually within 1500 miles or so.
Anyway, back to the car. Due to his lack of maintenece of any kind (although he won't listen to me when I tell him that), he managed to crack the block at 42,000 miles (I believe he ran the radiator completely dry and drove around for a few days like that). Cadillac wanted upwards of $9,500 to replace the engine with a brand new one with 3 year warranty or some such. Him being the tightwad that he is, asked a buddy of his to get and engine and replace it. Well, he got hosed on that job too (although he won't admit it...guy charged him $3,500 to put in a junkyard engine with something like 130,000 miles on it). So now he has a 98 with an engine with 130,000 miles and an odometer that says 43,xxx. Don't even get me started on the odometer fraud, I've already tried to explain it to him, he doesn't want to hear it.
Well, the "new" engine that was put in leaks and burns oil at a rate of about a quart per month. I've told him to take it up with his "buddy" that dropped the engine in, but he doesn't want to confront him about it for fear of messing up their friendship. Whatever
He won't pay someone to take a look at the engine and find out why it leaks and burns oil, and I'm sure not going to take the time to do it either, when I know that he's not going to do anything about it.
My question is...what oil should I put in this thing to minimize the consumption as much as possible? I know that at this point, nothing is going to stop it, but I want to minimize it so that on the off chance that I actually get him to start changing the oil on a somewhat regular basis, I haven't already dumped 3 quarts into the engine for make-up.
The car gets driven maybe 200-300 miles a month now that he has the new truck, so I am thinking of just going with 6 month changes with a thick (20w-50) Maxlife or something. Maybe some HDEO 15w-40? I know when he does drive it, it hardly ever gets up to temp. so I'm more interested in the cold viscosity than anything. The engine specs 10w-30, so I don't think a thicker oil would be too detrimental to it. And quite frankly, if he doesn't care enough to have the engine properly fixed, then I don't really care enough to put something decent in it. I just want to patch it up enough to the point that he'll stop complaining to me when the "low oil" light comes on. At that point it's about 3 quarts low (7 quart sump), so I don't think that it'll be impossible to get consumption down to less than 3 quarts in 6 months.
Sorry for the long read, but I figured I should include a little bit about what I'm dealing with here, plus I just had to vent a little bit.
Thanks in advance for the help.
Anyway, back to the car. Due to his lack of maintenece of any kind (although he won't listen to me when I tell him that), he managed to crack the block at 42,000 miles (I believe he ran the radiator completely dry and drove around for a few days like that). Cadillac wanted upwards of $9,500 to replace the engine with a brand new one with 3 year warranty or some such. Him being the tightwad that he is, asked a buddy of his to get and engine and replace it. Well, he got hosed on that job too (although he won't admit it...guy charged him $3,500 to put in a junkyard engine with something like 130,000 miles on it). So now he has a 98 with an engine with 130,000 miles and an odometer that says 43,xxx. Don't even get me started on the odometer fraud, I've already tried to explain it to him, he doesn't want to hear it.
Well, the "new" engine that was put in leaks and burns oil at a rate of about a quart per month. I've told him to take it up with his "buddy" that dropped the engine in, but he doesn't want to confront him about it for fear of messing up their friendship. Whatever
![smirk.gif](https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif)
He won't pay someone to take a look at the engine and find out why it leaks and burns oil, and I'm sure not going to take the time to do it either, when I know that he's not going to do anything about it.
My question is...what oil should I put in this thing to minimize the consumption as much as possible? I know that at this point, nothing is going to stop it, but I want to minimize it so that on the off chance that I actually get him to start changing the oil on a somewhat regular basis, I haven't already dumped 3 quarts into the engine for make-up.
The car gets driven maybe 200-300 miles a month now that he has the new truck, so I am thinking of just going with 6 month changes with a thick (20w-50) Maxlife or something. Maybe some HDEO 15w-40? I know when he does drive it, it hardly ever gets up to temp. so I'm more interested in the cold viscosity than anything. The engine specs 10w-30, so I don't think a thicker oil would be too detrimental to it. And quite frankly, if he doesn't care enough to have the engine properly fixed, then I don't really care enough to put something decent in it. I just want to patch it up enough to the point that he'll stop complaining to me when the "low oil" light comes on. At that point it's about 3 quarts low (7 quart sump), so I don't think that it'll be impossible to get consumption down to less than 3 quarts in 6 months.
Sorry for the long read, but I figured I should include a little bit about what I'm dealing with here, plus I just had to vent a little bit.
Thanks in advance for the help.