rotella synthetic oil change interval

[tsmay51]

I posted this on another thread but I thought I would just start another post. I am changing oil on my dodge cummins every 5k miles with conventional rotella and mobil 1 filters. I drive about 15k to 20k a yr. If I change to rotella synthetic 5w40 can I safely extend my drains to 10k? If not, what would be realstic? I do not plan on adding a bypass filter or anything like that. Just wondering if this is safe. I cannot justify going to synthetic unless I can extend the changes out. Conventional oil has worked quite well for my brother. He has 2 dodge cummins with 500k and 250k. They have seen nothing but a steady diet of conventional oil. The only thing I am trying to do here is extend the oil drains out.

 

[flatlandtacoma]

I'm no expert but... The only way to be sure is with UOA. You probably can but I think a lot depends on how hard your engine works etc. You can look at others' UOA here to get a feel before you try it. Here's a few that might help:

Rotella 5w40, 6.0 PSD, 9,432 miles
Rotella 5w-40 Synthetic, 9976 miles, Duramax
'93 Dodge Cummins Rotella T synthetic 5W-40 7500 miles
2004 Dodge Cummins Rotella 5w-40 syn 15,000
04 Dodge Cummins Rotella 5w-40 syn 16,000

 

[messiah4linux]

I use Rotella Syn 5W40 in all my vehicles.

When I owned my 97 Ford Ranger (4 liter V6) I was doing 7500 mile oil changes and I felt I could go longer and so I did, a few times I went to 10000.

Currently on my 01 Ford F150 4.6L I have about 8000 miles on RTS.

 

[bmwtechguy]

One of my friends went from regular Rotella to the syn 5W-40 and doubled his OCI to 10K miles in his 97 Powerstroke. This works out to about one year for him and most of his trips are over 10 miles here in SC. His oil still visibly looks great when he changes it, not really very dark or sooty. He uses Mobil 1 oil filters for about $10. So if I were to guess, I would say under similar conditions, you would be ok at 10K miles or more, but to be really sure, you could send off a couple samples from consecutive oil changes. He said that he does not enjoy changing oil much, so once a year is better than twice. He has mentioned that truck starts and runs better in the cold weather as well.

 

[Oldwolf]

I use Rotella Syn 5w40 in my 02 Explorer. I change it at 7.5k miles and all is well. I could probably go to 10k like I do in my '00 Cavalier which runs Mobil 1 Extended Performance.