I was thinking of switching to Pennzoil's full synthetic 10w-30 from my Motorcraft 15W-40 I use now. Why? My truck is a 1996 Ford F-150, 302 V-8, now has 221,000 miles on it, I drive a 1000 miles a week. Want to extend the drain intervals from 3K-4K to like 6K. Right now the truck has been getting the oil done once a month since new. Maybe the Long Life 15w-40 might be better because of thickness for the bearing clearences. The truck gets the snot run out of it every day heavy loads, full throttle blasts, extended idle time, lots of abuse. Does not leak oil at all. Oh yeah, I forgot I also just treated the engine with Auto-RX yesterday with the fresh oil change, I will see how that work out, bought three bottles of it because of the high miles. So Johhny what would you reccomend for my application. Thanks!
Pennzoil Synthetic...Question for Johnny
- Thread starter fatrat540
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Patman, I do lots of long distance driving with my VW 1.8 turbo motor and currently have dino in it. I know that highway driving is generally easy on the oil but what about an extended highway trip (7 hours or so) in 90 plus degree weather? Just wondering how many miles I should run before changing my Castrol GTX 5w-30 (it's what the VW dealer put in).
BTW, next oil change, I'll go synthetic.
Patman
Staff member
Extended highway trips in hot weather are still not too bad on the oil. Keep in mind that
you'll be at steady rpms most of the time and at low throttle positions. So the oil isn't being
stressed too hard. It's fully warmed up so it's got all of the moisture out of it, and the oil
temperature shouldn't be super hot on the highway either. You'll find the highest oil temps
will be when you're crawling along in bumper to bumper traffic.
It's hard to say exactly how long you should keep that 5w30 GTX in there, but keep in mind
that 5w30s will tend to thin out quicker, and even more so with conventional oil. I probably
wouldn't push that oil much past 4k. But then again, everyone knows how much I dislike
5w30.
you'll be at steady rpms most of the time and at low throttle positions. So the oil isn't being
stressed too hard. It's fully warmed up so it's got all of the moisture out of it, and the oil
temperature shouldn't be super hot on the highway either. You'll find the highest oil temps
will be when you're crawling along in bumper to bumper traffic.
It's hard to say exactly how long you should keep that 5w30 GTX in there, but keep in mind
that 5w30s will tend to thin out quicker, and even more so with conventional oil. I probably
wouldn't push that oil much past 4k. But then again, everyone knows how much I dislike
5w30.
fatrat,
May I suggest that you stick with 40wt oil? I think the 30wt will be too thin to protect the internals when you do WOT runs and high load applications. Maybe Johnny can provide us info on any Pennzoil/Quaker State synthetic products that are around the 40wt. scale.
Regards,
Oz
The_Oz
I'm with you on 40wt. If that same vehicle was in Oz there would be no 30wt crap in the owners manual. No why would that be I wonder??
I'm with you on 40wt. If that same vehicle was in Oz there would be no 30wt crap in the owners manual. No why would that be I wonder??
After 221,000 miles I would not switch to a 10W30. If you want Pennzoil, and if you want synthetic, then I would recommend our European Formula 5W40. It is a PAO synthetic and is very shear stable. It would handle 6k easy. If you want to stay with the 15W40, it looks like the Motorcraft has done you a good job. If your looking for other 15W40's, I would recommend you look at Pennzoil Long Life, Schaeffer's, Mobil, or Chevron. All excellent choices.
Patman
Staff member
If you're doing 1k a week I bet you will find that you can go longer than 6k between intervals.
Highway driving like that is pretty easy on the oil, and in this case you should definitely do
an oil analysis to determine how far you really can push whatever oil you choose. You'll
be surprised to find that at 6k that oil will probably not be used up, even a conventional oil
can *probably* handle 6k intervals with the type of driving you're doing. Even with the hard driving that
you say it sees, I still think the oil will be in better shape than an oil that sees mostly shorter
trips.
Highway driving like that is pretty easy on the oil, and in this case you should definitely do
an oil analysis to determine how far you really can push whatever oil you choose. You'll
be surprised to find that at 6k that oil will probably not be used up, even a conventional oil
can *probably* handle 6k intervals with the type of driving you're doing. Even with the hard driving that
you say it sees, I still think the oil will be in better shape than an oil that sees mostly shorter
trips.
All the advice above is good, and it reminds me that Mobil's Delvac 1300 Super would be a great candidate for you. It is available everywhere in 15W-40, it is designed for extended drain intervals, and it is priced within nickels per quart of all the other conventional oils. So the cost effectiveness would be unbeatable. In case you aren't familiar with it, it comes in black gallon jugs and is super popular with truck and fleet operators. The additive package is very aggressive WRT cleaning and if you're using AutoRx, the creator of that product recommends using Delvac 1300.
That said, the full synthetics can run even longer drain intervals. The cost is higher but in your case the convenience of going for a lot of months between changes, plus the synth advantages, would justify it. And I would repeat what has been said by many others - you have to really believe that you can run the synth for what seems like forever, as long as you do a filter change once in a while (7500 mi?). The downside is only oil analysis can tell you when the oil is past its prime. Practically everyone chickens out and changes it before it has even begun to lose its additive package.
That said, the full synthetics can run even longer drain intervals. The cost is higher but in your case the convenience of going for a lot of months between changes, plus the synth advantages, would justify it. And I would repeat what has been said by many others - you have to really believe that you can run the synth for what seems like forever, as long as you do a filter change once in a while (7500 mi?). The downside is only oil analysis can tell you when the oil is past its prime. Practically everyone chickens out and changes it before it has even begun to lose its additive package.
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