I switched my still-fairly-new Nissan Sentra SE-R SpecV over to Red Line 5W30 at the 12,000 mile mark. I just turned over 15,000 miles on the clock this past week.
It had used all sorts of oils up to this point: mystery factory fill, Chevron Supreme, Castrol Syntec blend (Dealership), Schaeffer S7K, Castrol Syntec blend (Dealership again) and finally the current Red Line. As you can see, the car’s had many types of oil and the average drain interval was approximately 2,500 miles … so it was always fresh. No problems with anything, not even consumption but giving it moderately gentle break-in treatment I wasn’t really expecting any “issues.”
What’s been odd is that lately I’ve been pulling up and stopping at red lights and getting the weird sensation that my car has stalled. It goes almost perfectly silent. I find myself reaching for the key to re-start the car while looking at the tach and ‘blipping’ the throttle. Sure enough, the engine is still running fine but I have to turn the radio and fan completely “off” to actually
hear it idle. This may be normal for a Lexus, Mercedes or Acura … but a Sentra??
Maybe it’s the noisy, studded snow tires which makes idling at a light eerily quiet? Maybe the engine is fully/perfectly broken in now? Maybe I’m going deaf? There are no other signs of hearing problems. Eavesdropping on other conversations in my office is still not a problem.
It would appear that Red Line has been making this thing run smoother than ever.
I’ve run Red Line in a ‘95 Honda Civic before and my UOAs are here on this site. Because of a coolant leak, I can’t say too much about them other than they were unimpressive. And I never felt it ran any smoother than when using any other oil. Mileage actually dropped when compared to the thin Mobil 1 I had used previously.
We’ve seen other Hondas without “glycol issues” and it would appear Red Line’s aggressive chemistry and their bearings simply are not the best of friends. The natural detergency of Red Line’s Group V ester chemistry does seem to clean up a lot of crud and scavenges copper from oil coolers, etc … but in most makes this diminishes quickly. From
piopio’s results in his SpecV, Red Line seems to be a great choice for this Nissan motor.
Anyway, I had a couple quarts of Red Line 5W30 left over from my Honda days, then ordered a couple more quarts to have enough for a complete oil & filter change. This is what I used over the winter. I’ll be changing my oil sometime in April (will post the UOA here) and then switching over to Schaeffer S7K for the foreseeable future since I have a lot on-hand.
I agree that myoilshop.com’s service is pretty good. However, their website needs some serious work/updating.
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Bror Jace
The engine just sounds good. I put a K&N filter in since that was what I thought was a better brand (hope it's ok). I will try and post some numbers when I send in a sample.
