Getting Geeky About Oil

[FartSquirrel]

Sorry. Mispoke.

They say the lifters on the "dead" cylinders will fill with oil and stiffen, thus causing the pushrods to be bent.

The only real solution is to keep the engine from dropping cylinders. Which can be done with a programmer, replacing some internals, or in my case, keeping the trans in manual and restrict it from shifting above 7th. Which works just fine for my daily driving.

I only have v8 or v4 mode. Supposedly the newer trucks are much more advanced in their afm's and dropping cylinders, and the manual control of the trans doesn't work like it does on mine.

 

[FartSquirrel]

Ozarks. On average we may get in the teens a couple nights a year. But last couple years we didn't get out of single digits for a week or so.

 

[MolaKule]

Love the Ozarks; Mo or Arkansas?

During one winter after we moved into Iowa the temp went down to -30F one morning and I had started a new job but was wondering if I could get into work that morning. At the time I was using Mobil1 10W30 HM in the 5.3L V8 TrailBlazer and it started up without a hitch. The oil pressure gauge went up to 50 psi and then decayed to 35 psi.

I suspect you could even use a 5W30 grade.

 

[MolaKule]

Sorry. Mispoke.

They say the lifters on the "dead" cylinders will fill with oil and stiffen, thus causing the pushrods to be bent.

I don't buy that explanation. If that were case then all deactivated cylinders should have bent pushrods.

Did you have a stuck valve?

 

[Allaneddie]

Welcome to oil Geekhead country.

 

[FartSquirrel]

Missouri side, but only 9 miles from the Arkansas line.

Just going by what stealership said and by all the hubbaloo on silveradosierra. If the lifter does not stiffen, then there are no problems. Thus the reason R bank has not been replaced. Apparently all the lifters on L were going bad, but only a couple had completely gone give me just a couple bent pushrods.

Negative 30 too cold for this old hillbilly. I'd move to the Caribbean if it weren't so far from the grandbaby.

 

[Triple_Se7en]

Whilst lurking on another forum, I came across posts saying they too had the tick, and it went away when they switched from Mobil 1 to Castrol GTX.

I'll bet the Mobil-1 they were using wasn't EP / Triple Action.

I used to sound the same alarm on older formulas / recipes of Mobil-1. But if you use the current right ones, Mobil-1 is either just as quiet - or quieter.
Yes, my ticking Kia engine that's always on a PCMO boutique oil recently, got quieter when changed to Castrol Edge Euro/EP. But in re-ordering oils this fall for my kids and grandkids, I bought Mobil-1 over Castrol and it wasn't because Castrol Edge EP is still not available here in SE Michigan.