Recommend me an oil for a (worn out) Ford 5.4 2 valve

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Assuming I can get 500 miles on it without it coming back apart ...

Open to anything from 0w-20 to a 5w-40. Very worn out cylinder bores and a lot of piston slap. Previously full of sludge and crusty sludge from lack of maintenance and a severe overheat. New timing chains and tensioners / guides.

Engine either has 240,000 or 135,000 miles on it. Based on the condition of the guide arms and tensioner arms, I'm inclined to think maybe it's at 135k miles. It does get run hard. I'm not afraid (or wasn't before) to have my foot firmly planted on the floor towing a trailer up a hill at >4000 RPM for minutes on end.

Mostly looking for something that will work for the crappy cylinder walls. Similar to how the old pennzoil conventional yellow bottle had a lot of molybdenum and quieted down slappy old Jeep 4.0s.
 
15w-40. Cheap and thick. i think I'd spend just a few more bucks on t4 for it's high calcium formulation compared to delvac 1300. Just drive it a bit softly for some time and maybe it'll last a while. Poor neglected engine.
 
15w-40. Cheap and thick. i think I'd spend just a few more bucks on t4 for it's high calcium formulation compared to delvac 1300. Just drive it a bit softly for some time and maybe it'll last a while. Poor neglected engine.

I don't know if I'd run a 15w in one of these engines. They do have very small oil passages. But a 5w-40 or 10w-30 HDEO diesel oil is a strong consideration at this point.
 
The 5.4 does have the restrictions in the oil passages that lead to the heads-I wouldn't go thicker (cold) than a 10W in it. There's some pretty good 10W30 HDEOs out there, and some are cheap (like Mystik JT-8).
 
Just 10w-30 not synthetic though. Shell has a diesel formula that works well.

I have one with 200k and it has cold piston slap and quiets right down once warm. These are noise makers but they wont seem to stick rods thru unless you run them low and wipe the bearings out.

Also check your pickup screen! I know on the 4.6L smaller sister engines 2000 ~ 2003 will blow the tensioners and all the debris get caught in the pickup screen.
 
I don't know if I'd run a 15w in one of these engines. They do have very small oil passages. But a 5w-40 or 10w-30 HDEO diesel oil is a strong consideration at this point.
I used to own a 2v 5.4 and ran 15w-40 in it since a shop i worked with would let me take some. Once put 20w-50 in because i got 2 jugs of it from friend for free.
 
Seen a lot 15w-40 ran through 2v 5.4 in fleet service. They always lived long lives.

I would not worry about running some through it.
Same. A customer i work with uses 15w-40 for both their gas and diesel trucks at their service center, they do work for power companies. And the gas trucks spec 20 grade but they don't care. They use chevron delo which is dual rated.
 
I have a 5.4 2V, I run M1 Euro 0-40 in it
I was thinking about Euro oil too. Little thicker and made for engines with long timing chains


Seen a lot 15w-40 ran through 2v 5.4 in fleet service. They always lived long lives.

I would not worry about running some through it.
Even up here in NY ?
I think Rotella T6 in 5w-40 or 10w-30 and the m1 above are options now. Depends on what's at the local stores.
 
If you find it
 

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I'm not a big fan of running HDEO's in gassers unless its dual-rated.

I would suggest a 5w-40 Euro like QS Euro.
 
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