safe to say synthetic for a varnish free engine??

[stang5]

I like how clean the valve train of our 04 Accord is looking through the fill hole and I want it to stay that way.. I bought this car for my wife with 20k miles on the odo, did a arx treatment and have been using chevron 5w20 at 4k oci since. The car has now 40k miles and it's driven 4 miles to work and back 3x and to school 12 miles and back 3x a week..I use M1 520 on my mustang and the valvtrain is spotless, dino oil on the pathfinder (4k miles oci) and the valvetrain looks like [censored] and it bugs the [censored] out of me. BTW I know varnish is cosmetic but if I can avoid it witht he right oil i can sleep better at night. Should I switch to synthetic? If i do it's going to be M1 5w20 or keep using dino and keep my fingers cross?

 

[Drew99GT]

Have you owned the Pathfinder since new?

On cars I've owned since new and used conventional at reasonable intervals, they are spotless. I can look right at the valves through the oil fill hole on our Olds 88 (GM 3.8L) with 180,000 miles and it's shiny bright metal.

There's a member here who has done 20,000 mile intervals with Havoline 5w-20 in a Civic that gets driven all highway. He's posted the UOA, and showed pictures when the valve cover was off. Crystal clear. So Hondas it seems are pretty easy on oil.

It depends on the vehicle, how it's driven, the oil quality and drain interval etc.

 

[wolfc70]

A healthy PCV system helps too, by keeping gasses from building and condensing in the cooler parts of the engine. All engines have some form of varnish, you just may not be able to see it if you do not pull the valve cover.

That and mileage, trip duration, and engine loads all play a factor in how much gasses are generated by the engine. Even a small amount of blow by will cause varnish to start forming.

 

[TomYoung]

On this same note, does anyone have thoughts on whether synthetics or heavy detergent oil might reverse varnish?

 

[saberz]

A plugged up PCV system can do lots of things to oil and an engine. As mentioned varnish can happy to any engine regardless of oil or OCI.

My 01 Impala with 3-4k OCI's with Mobil 1(severe driving) for 8 years had a tan/light brown/creamy color varnish over its internals. This by no means was a sign of poor maintenance. It was given synthetic its entire life up to the point where I gifted it to my brother and he is now running PP in it(which I put into the car).

My Jeep was fed Dino oil its entire life and the internals were caked dark brown with varnish and build up. Not because of the dino oil, but because my brother was the type to just drive it 12k and not change the oil. His leased Camry had 2, yes 2!!! oil changes in the 3 years he had it(37k miles). The Impala is taken care of though, he actually takes care of it(likes the car)..

 

[lexus114]

Originally Posted By: Anies
A plugged up PCV system can do lots of things to oil and an engine. As mentioned varnish can happy to any engine regardless of oil or OCI.

My 01 Impala with 3-4k OCI's with Mobil 1(severe driving) for 8 years had a tan/light brown/creamy color varnish over its internals. This by no means was a sign of poor maintenance. It was given synthetic its entire life up to the point where I gifted it to my brother and he is now running PP in it(which I put into the car).

My Jeep was fed Dino oil its entire life and the internals were caked dark brown with varnish and build up. Not because of the dino oil, but because my brother was the type to just drive it 12k and not change the oil. His leased Camry had 2, yes 2!!! oil changes in the 3 years he had it(37k miles). The Impala is taken care of though, he actually takes care of it(likes the car)..

 

[saberz]

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nice knowing all of you. My grammar/spelling error has given me little recourse but to return to 1st grade and re-educate myself.


Was very nice knowing you all. */facepalm

 

[mechtech2]

Inferior PCV systems will cause varnish and sludge.
Even if they are working as designed, they may not be up to the job.
But heat is a close second. Engines that run warm get more deposits.
And finally, maybe that pathfinder has more blow by [rings].

If full synth oil fixed varnish problems, it would be evident by now. It doesn't.

 

[bepperb]

Our HL has minimal but visible varnish, even though it has always gotten PP or SynPower at 5000 mile OCI's. At least in my observation, this must be due to the design of the engine as our Accord has no varnish and was likely treated with worse care (we bought used). So no, I don't think a Synthetic guarantees a varnish free engine. Though I would say that some oils seem to leave a cleaner engine than others, and they tend to be synthetics. I've seen pics of questionably designed engines run with M1 for 100,000+ miles that look spotless under the valve covers. I'm sure other oils clean well, but have fewer images available simply due to their lower sales volume.

 

[saberz]

It really depends on the engine and all out design, quality of parts, maintenance etc.

You can take two of the same cars, same engine and oil and they may differ in terms of varnish etc over the course of time. Habits are a hard thing to break, and cash is a hard thing to fork over for some people to perform maintenance.

 

[stang5]

Originally Posted By: Drew99GT
Have you owned the Pathfinder since new?

On cars I've owned since new and used conventional at reasonable intervals, they are spotless. I can look right at the valves through the oil fill hole on our Olds 88 (GM 3.8L) with 180,000 miles and it's shiny bright metal.

There's a member here who has done 20,000 mile intervals with Havoline 5w-20 in a Civic that gets driven all highway. He's posted the UOA, and showed pictures when the valve cover was off. Crystal clear. So Hondas it seems are pretty easy on oil.

It depends on the vehicle, how it's driven, the oil quality and drain interval etc.



I bought the pathfinder with 100k miles, the valvetrain was clean with a light tan color..I'm right on top of maintenance stuff, fluids and parts are replace before their even due for replacement..The pathfinder was arx 4x times. I,ve owned the truck for 10 years. This year it started to develop a leak and it smokes on start up sometimes, so I'm switching it to maxlife semi syn. pathfinder has now 185k miles..

 

[1993_VG30E_GXE]

I suspect the varnish means nothing. I don't have scientific proof, but i'm going to upload some photos of before and after of my overhaul, and you guys can see first hand how after 16 yrs of use on dino Castrol GTX, the varnish is not that bad. Sludge, maybe that's a different issue. If full syn cuts down on sludge then or avoids it, then that's definately a bonus. But then again after 16 yrs there was zero sludge in this engine.

 

[saberz]

You need to give us another update on the rebuild bud, I loved reading your threads and seeing the pics of the progress. Very entertaining!

 

[BuickGN]

I have a co-worker who's a member of this site that has seen varnish, even some sludge on his 200,000+ mile GTA using Mobil One for the first part of life and RP for the second part. I wouldn't say a synthetic guarantees varnish free but it's good insurance.

 

[1993_VG30E_GXE]

Ya Anies, the pictures are really good, I've found a website Photobucket where I can host them, but when I link it to this website they get resized to much smaller so I'll put the link to the homepage if people want to see. I'm going to organize it into main folders:

BEFORE
AFTER

I put the intake manifold on last night so I'm pretty much ready to put the valve covers on now, then bolt on the accessories like Oil Filter Brackt, AC Compressor Bracket, Alternator, Power Steering Pump, Knock Sensor, Oil Pressure Switch, Engine Mounts, Drive Shaft Bearing Retainer.

All in all it's looking pretty good. I used cheap Dem-Kote industrial paint, and it doesn't cling well, when I stored all the parts in that barrel in the photo, when they move around in the barrel the paint chips off. At this point i'm not going to touch up the paint, because I really don't care once it's in the engine bay - I was mainly doing it to prevent rust.

Photos to come real soon.

 

[tig1]

I've never had varnish in an engine even at 10,000 mile OCIs.

 

[lipadj46]

I have a fair amount of varnish in my engine with 5k OCIs. I used Dino for 75,000 miles and then synthetic after that up to 114,000. I had the cylinder heads off at 100,00 miles and had a lot of cleaning to do. I have an aluminum block and heads though.