Under Valve Cover 2016 Mazda 6 135k Miles

[tcruise]

MIL’s valve cover started to leak on her 2016 Mazda 6. She bought this car brand new and had the oil changed at the dealer until about 70k miles, I’ve done the oil changes since. She has been doing 10k OCI with Amsoil Signature Series 0W20 until this change; we put in Castrol EDGE High Mileage 0W20 per her request.

What do we think? I think it looks great!

 

[barkingspider]

Amsoil doesn’t disappoint. Looks clean!

 

[tig1]

Looks good.

 

[Oliveoil2]

Just getting started!

 

[ClutchDisc]

Looks great and exactly what you would expect from Amsoil Signature Series.

A downgrade to switch away from that. Why switch when Amsoil Signature Series gave you that?

 

[slacktide_bitog]

Looks good

 

[EvoMan]

Looks good.

 

[shortyb]

She seems to be pretty easy on her car from the lack of wear and cleanliness of the metal surfaces. The Amsoil Signature Series did exceptionally well in this situation, but I dare say the Castrol won't look as good in 50K. Past experience from the lower tier Castrol oils is quite a bit of varnish will be present and is not quite as good as the Amsoil IMHO will be over a 10K OCI. I'd show MIL those pics and convince her to continue on with the Amsoil Signature Series.

 

[bullwinkle]

Think I would do the oil changes more often with the Castrol, like every 5K. It’s not as good as Amsoil Signature Series!

 

[Urshurak776]

Wow, that looks great! Let's go ahead and put in an inferior oil!

Great plan Mom!

 

[crashz]

Looking clean!

I agree with the others, the Amsoil is doing a great job. Is she selling the car soon? Maybe she doesn't care as much due to seeing a new car in her future.

 

[dkryan]

Thanks for posting, tcruise!

What OCI was followed during the first 70k miles with the dealership oil changes?

And your mother-in-law specifically requested Castro EDGE High Mileage 0w-20??!

Exactly how long has she been lurking on BITOG?

 

[D1dad]

I have no record of using castrol, but can tell you my engine looked every bit as good and dare I say better using Valvoline High Mileage synthetic. I stripped the pcv at 85k and it looked absolutely pristine when i put a new valve cover on. Of course, I'd stay with AMSOIL with those results.

 

[tcruise]

It was a cost thing. We did the valve cover gasket, engine air filter, cabin air filter, and transmission drain and fill at the same time. She will probably go back to Amsoil after this OCI. It also doesn’t help Amsoil hiked the prices almost $2 a quart. She actually bought at Walmart and said “here I got this, this time since we’re doing all this other stuff to save a little $$$” so I put it in haha . I recommended 5k this time so we’ll see what she wants to do, I put 5k in the maintenance reminder on the dash.

I’m not sure what the OCI was with the dealer changes, if I had to guess it was 5k-7k.

She lives in the country so her drives are usually long and mostly highway so the car pretty much never sees short trips.