Need oil for car with oil control ring issues

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I got great advice a month or so ago asking about a syn oil for our high mileage ES300, so now I'm back re: a slightly more problematic SUV vehicle in our stable.

The Patient: I have a 1998 Acura SLX (rebadged Isuzu Trooper), 159k miles, excellent condition. The vehicle has a known issue with inadequately designed oil control ring drain holes, which tend to clog and increase oil consumption. This affected the 3.5l V6 models from 1998 to the early '00 model years until the rings were re-designed. I believe it is the same issue that plagues the 2006-2011 2az-fe I4 Toyota engines. I have followed Isuzu forum advice with maintenance work-arounds and I've got my oil consumption tamed. I'm desperately not interested in tearing down and replacing rings.
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History: I've had the vehicle 4 years/20k miles (not a daily driver, clearly). When I got it, it burned oil lavishly. The last 9k miles, on the recommendation of Isuzu experts, I've used Mobil Delvac 1300 HD diesel oil. 10 months ago I treated the rings w/SeaFoam while it was off the road for a big service (That consisted of squirting each cylinder via the plug hole with an ounce or so, letting it sit for a week before blowing out and re-starting). I now have oil consumption to little/none (= or < .5qt/4k miles). I think the HD oil was helping gradually, but the ring soak made the big difference suddenly, clearing the too-few passages and generally cleaning the rings. Though it goes few miles a year, it is also now going generally 20 miles or more each way when it is driven instead of a few short hops. I believe that is helping, too.

I'm 4k since the last oil change (10 months ago). So now I'm re-considering the oil to use now that it's not burning. My mileage has dropped dramatically with the 15w-40 HDEO, and that's my only concern vs. staying with the Delvac 1300 or similar. Weather/climate is western WA/Seattle, so pretty mild. Generally 40F to 80F year-round. A picture below to demonstrate that once a year, that is exceeded.
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My thoughts are:

1) Is there a 5w-30 passenger oil that can give me the cleaning power of the HDEO?
2) Or a different HDEO like a Rotella flavor with a more mpg friendly weight?
3) One of these in a syn or syn blend that makes sense to use now that it is not consuming oil?
4) Stick w/15w-40 HDEO?

I understand from reading elsewhere that the loss of efficiency/higher temps of the 15w-40 is also beneficial in helping it keep the rings clean, so I'm unsure of the trade-off vs other oils/weights/detergent effect.

On my shelf I look and I have 2.5 gallons of 15w-40 mineral HDEO, and a full sealed 5qt. of 5w-30 Pennzoil Platinum. Would mixing those in some ratio give me any benefit or be a bad idea (I hear people say they do that, but I'm no oil expert so I have no idea if it's good or bad and why I am asking questions here and not winging it on my own.
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Looking forward to the typically good and educational advice here.


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Second the Shell Rotella T6
or Mobil 1 Turbo Diesel
(not sure if it's 0W or 5W), second number is 40...
Lots of detergents...
 
Uunnngh. SO 90's!
.......get me my Genesis controller, that'll get'er goin!

Rotella 5w-40, M1 0w-30/40 are all good options
[censored], why not run PP/PU 5w-30, that's more then good enough IMO, with good cleaning abilities.
 
Originally Posted By: 147_Grain
Originally Posted By: 901Memphis
Mobil 1 0w40.

+1


A quality synthetic like M1 will prevent ring coking in the first place. However in your place, I would use M1 at this point to begine the clean up process. of removing carbon deposits.
 
Originally Posted By: Oro_O
1) Is there a 5w-30 passenger oil that can give me the cleaning power of the HDEO?

No.
Originally Posted By: Oro_O
2) Or a different HDEO like a Rotella flavor with a more mpg friendly weight?

No. Forget about mpg: difference is miserable.
Originally Posted By: Oro_O
3) One of these in a syn or syn blend that makes sense to use now that it is not consuming oil?

Syn blend is OK. Pure synthetic are what I would avoid, except, may be, Mobil1 0W40 and Shell Rotella 5W40.
Originally Posted By: Oro_O
4) Stick w/15w-40 HDEO?

Good choice, IMO.

One more question: are you a fanatic believer? If not, put a quart of ATF for 400-500 miles trip and change the oil. If you was Europenian, I would advise you to drain oil-AFT mixture, prepare a 66%/34% of oil/diesel fuel mix and pour it into the sump. Then idle for 15 minutes, drain this cocktail and add new HDEO oil.
 
Originally Posted By: timeau
Originally Posted By: Oro_O
1) Is there a 5w-30 passenger oil that can give me the cleaning power of the HDEO?

No.
Originally Posted By: Oro_O
2) Or a different HDEO like a Rotella flavor with a more mpg friendly weight?

No. Forget about mpg: difference is miserable.
Originally Posted By: Oro_O
3) One of these in a syn or syn blend that makes sense to use now that it is not consuming oil?

Syn blend is OK. Pure synthetic are what I would avoid, except, may be, Mobil1 0W40 and Shell Rotella 5W40.
Originally Posted By: Oro_O
4) Stick w/15w-40 HDEO?

Good choice, IMO.

One more question: are you a fanatic believer? If not, put a quart of ATF for 400-500 miles trip and change the oil. If you was Europenian, I would advise you to drain oil-AFT mixture, prepare a 66%/34% of oil/diesel fuel mix and pour it into the sump. Then idle for 15 minutes, drain this cocktail and add new HDEO oil.


I think pyb would clean just as good if not better.

putting diesel in the crankcase is not my cup of tea.
 
Originally Posted By: tig1
Originally Posted By: 147_Grain
Originally Posted By: 901Memphis
Mobil 1 0w40.

+1


A quality synthetic like M1 will prevent ring coking in the first place. However in your place, I would use M1 at this point to begine the clean up process. of removing carbon deposits.


+1 Great advice
 
Originally Posted By: timeau
Originally Posted By: Oro_O
1) Is there a 5w-30 passenger oil that can give me the cleaning power of the HDEO?

No.
Originally Posted By: Oro_O
2) Or a different HDEO like a Rotella flavor with a more mpg friendly weight?

No. Forget about mpg: difference is miserable.
Originally Posted By: Oro_O
3) One of these in a syn or syn blend that makes sense to use now that it is not consuming oil?

Syn blend is OK. Pure synthetic are what I would avoid, except, may be, Mobil1 0W40 and Shell Rotella 5W40.
Originally Posted By: Oro_O
4) Stick w/15w-40 HDEO?

Good choice, IMO.

One more question: are you a fanatic believer? If not, put a quart of ATF for 400-500 miles trip and change the oil. If you was Europenian, I would advise you to drain oil-AFT mixture, prepare a 66%/34% of oil/diesel fuel mix and pour it into the sump. Then idle for 15 minutes, drain this cocktail and add new HDEO oil.


Please, disregard this entire post because it contains very poor information. Seriously.

I don't know that it will give you a significant increase in MPG over the 15W-40, but M1 High Mileage 5W-30 will still have almost the same amount of detergents as the HDEO you're using.
 
Our family has a 2001 Trooper. It has 154,140 miles on it. Just completed an Auto-RX rinse cycle with it to see if it would clean up the rings. Used Delvac 1300 15W-40 for the clean and rinse cycles, prior to it, I was trying Rotella 5W-40 for a little bit. The Delvac has done a good job of slowing down the oil consumption to almost nothing.

You said your mileage dropped dramatically, what are your driving conditions like? Mainly city driving? A lot of stop and go?

We live out in the country and it takes us twenty minutes to get to town, so our driving is an easy 55 mph drive almost the entire way.
We just checked our mileage the other day because we haven't checked it for a while, and we were curious to see what it was. We went to pick up some wheat seed, and we had to drive 50 miles one way, so around 100 round trip. We towed our 5 x 8 mesh trailer empty one way, and then with 1,750 pounds on the way home. We made three trips this way, and we filled up at the bringing of the first trip, and we filled up again on the third trip, so we checked the mileage to see what we were getting while towing. It was 16.5 mpg.. We were happy with that.

The Delvac 1300 seems to work well in the Trooper's engine. If you want to try and bump up the mileage a little bit, you can try Mobil 1 TDT 5W-40 or the 0W-40. They might help with that.

We are also using Mobil 1 ATF in the transmission, Mobil 1 Gear oil in the rear differential, and Delvac 75W-90 in the front Differential. That might be helping as well.

The Mobil products seem to be working well in the Trooper. I tried Pennzoil PP and Rotella T6. With the T6, when I added lubegard to it, the engine was nice, smooth, and really quiet. Then, I tried the T6 by itself, and the engine started sounding louder and rougher.
With the Delvac, the engine sounds just as quiet and smooth by itself as it did with T6 with lubegard added to it.

In the winter, you may get away with a lighter viscosity, but in the spring, and especially summer, I recommend going with the 40 weight. Our Trooper's owner's manual says that "10W-30 is the preferred viscosity, however, warmer temperatures require higher viscosity oil for satisfactory lubrication."

Also, because the Trooper is a camshaft over bucket tappet design, I'm trying to use 40 weight oils with higher zinc content for the extra protection. Mobil 1 TDT or 0W-40 would fall into this category, with the added benefit of high detergency to clean things, and being synthetic, they will resist making any new deposits.
 
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Quote:
The vehicle has a known issue with inadequately designed oil control ring drain holes, which tend to clog

The engine is cooking the oil in these drain holes. That is somewhat similar to the VW engines that cooked the oil in the turbochargers. The VW 502 spec is made for their problem with coking oil. You might find an oil that meets the VW 502 (or higher) spec, and it should work well for you. Many of the oil makers offer these oils in 0W-40, 0W-30, 5W-40, etc.
 
oil control ring (more like piston oil control ring-land oil drainage design) issue with Isuzu-based gasoline Vee-6, yes, that one is confirmed.

Similar to Saturn's oil burning issue as the mileage creeps up: Isuzu shall always have this problem no matter what (as mileage creeps up). The only way to resolve this (expensive) is to take off the pistons and clear the oil control ring gallery and clear the drainage holes. There's no revised fix for this matter (some may recommend drilling more holes onto them but then I don't see how that would cure an otherwise questionable design).

2AZ-FE having similar issue? Not aware of. The only thing that plagues 2AZ-FE would be the head-gasket issue for around 2002~03.

Q.
 
Originally Posted By: Oro_O
I understand from reading elsewhere that the loss of efficiency/higher temps of the 15w-40 is also beneficial in helping it keep the rings clean, so I'm unsure of the trade-off vs other oils/weights/detergent effect.


For heavily worn rings and bores, higher viscoscity oil slows down oil burning a bit... but that is not what is going on here. The problem is a poor ring design, which can coke up. Coking up is burnt oil becoming a solid, and clogging the oil return holes. Maintaining higher ring temps is NOT the way to go here.

Now that you've got the holes unclogged through soaking, it's your job to keep them that way. To do that you need an oil that starts lubrication immediately on startup, so use something that starts with 0w. You also need an oil that doesn't coke up easily at high ring temps, so use a synthetic. You need an oil that's good at cleaning, so use either an HDEO, or a high detergent oil like Pennzoil Platinum or Ultra, or use any oil and change it often, to keep the cleaning additives fresh.

Given your mileage concerns, I would use a full synthetic 0w-30, and change it often, like every 4K miles or once a year, whichever comes first.
 
Originally Posted By: Quest
oil control ring (more like piston oil control ring-land oil drainage design) issue with Isuzu-based gasoline Vee-6, yes, that one is confirmed.

Similar to Saturn's oil burning issue as the mileage creeps up: Isuzu shall always have this problem no matter what (as mileage creeps up). The only way to resolve this (expensive) is to take off the pistons and clear the oil control ring gallery and clear the drainage holes. There's no revised fix for this matter (some may recommend drilling more holes onto them but then I don't see how that would cure an otherwise questionable design).

2AZ-FE having similar issue? Not aware of. The only thing that plagues 2AZ-FE would be the head-gasket issue for around 2002~03.

Q.


Correction: more like headgasket leaks due to stretched head bolts.
 
I don't know that any oil, whether it be M1 or magic dust will prevent ring coking in this engine.
You're doing fine with what you're doing now.
A 15W-40 grade is fine for the lowest temperatures you see.
Rotella works fine every day in ring lands that get a lot hotter than yours in countless highway hauls.
Use it and rest easy.
If need be, you can always do another dose of SeaFoam, which you've learned works great in this engine.
Doesn't do the trick with Saturns, though.
 
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