what would you use if your motor.....

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What oil would you use for a VW eurovan with 260K on the motor that drives 50% city 50% High way.
uses about 1L of oil every 2500KM. the manual asks for 5W30 upto 25C.

I was thinking of AMSOIL 5W30 but after 10K usage I have to add 4L make up oil. It gets costly.

All other synthetic oils cost about the same.
I was thinking of blending 5W30 GTX with AMSOIL 5W30. 4L GTX 1L AMSOIL.

If you have anyother suggestions please let me know.
I have access to AMSOIL, Shell, Canadian tire brand, Castrol, penzoil, Qstate, Valvoline, Mobile Trisyntec.
 
For short oil change intervals (5000 km), use convential Castrol or Pennzoil. If you want to go beyond than, you'll need a synthetic.
 
I would probably try rotella t syn 5w40. It still flows well in the cold, and it may help consumption...........and it is fairly cheap. Pennzoil or castrol HM 5w30 might be a good choice as well.
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For short intervals I'd use a good mineral oil like Havoline/Chevron. If you want to try extended drains I'd go with a top notch synthetic like M1. Maybe this would be a good candidate for GC?

-T
 
I like the Rotella Syn 5W-40 idea. You could buy a gallon of this, then use dino Rotella 15W-40 (is there a 10W-30 Rotella available?) for the last bit & all the make-up oil. This will give you the bulk of a good Group III oil, & for relatively short 10k km intervals it will still be in great condition when you change it.

Or a similar plan using Canadian Tire or Mobil/Delvac oils.
 
With 260K I'd say keep doing what you're doing. Why change now? If anything, I would only switch to a slightly thicker grade or HM version of the same brand you've been using.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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for past 200K I have been using the wrong oil grade. the book asks for 5w30 all year around but I used 10W40 in winter and 20W50 in summer time.

I am in process of cleaning the engine with auto RX so I have decided to treat the engine with better oil after cleaning is over.
 
quote:

Originally posted by kickster:
good points. Now I have to find an European manual for Eurovan.

If someone here doen't volunteer an answer pretty soon, try some online VW groups. You shouldn't need to actually see a Euro manual to find out.
 
quote:

Originally posted by XS650:

Looks like you are in Toronto, the 10W sounds a bit iffy for a Toronto winter.


Toronto winters usually aren't too bad, but north of here it can get much colder. I ran Schaeffer 10w30 for the 2002/2003 winter in my Firebird without any problems, and my car was parked outside and I did not use the block heater either. The oil analysis results that spring didn't look all that bad actually, all things considered.
 
quote:

Originally posted by Patman:

quote:

Originally posted by XS650:

Looks like you are in Toronto, the 10W sounds a bit iffy for a Toronto winter.


Toronto winters usually aren't too bad, but north of here it can get much colder. I ran Schaeffer 10w30 for the 2002/2003 winter in my Firebird without any problems, and my car was parked outside and I did not use the block heater either. The oil analysis results that spring didn't look all that bad actually, all things considered.


Usually is the operative word. I'm not as much of a 0000W-xx oil fan as our fellow BITOG memebers who say you should use 0W-xx in Florida, but historical records for Toronto indicate you were a little lucky
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True story.

I got sent to Minneapolis for a couple of days one January. It was -20F and several people in the hotel weren't able to start their rental cars, so had called AAA. They were standing in the vestibule waiting for the yellow truck to rescue them when a Canadian for Manitoba came walking out.

He asked, "What's the meeting about? eh"

One of the guys waiting said "we are waiting for AAA to come start our cars."

Manitobian relpied, "What would you do if it ever actually got cold here? eh"

I laughed so hard I almost dropped my bottle of cold start fluid I was taking out to my bosses rental car.
 
You oil consumption tranlate to abit more that 1 quart in 1,500 miles in Chistian units. Not too bad but do you want it to increase?

Looks like you are in Toronto, the 10W sounds a bit iffy for a Toronto winter.

I would suggest you use a 0W-xx or 5W-xx in the winter and stick a 15W-40 HDEO the rest of the year. Your Eurovan engine gets run pretty hard just keeping up with highway traffic.

A good 5W-40 or 0W-40 synthetic would be a good year round oil if you want to spring for synthetic, but with your mileage on conventional oil, why mess with success.

You should also find out what VW recommends in Europe. Canada is often corrupted by the US influence and the viscosity recomendations you are seeing could be indirectly caused by US CAFE requirements.

Since Toronto can be hot in the summer and you have some wide open fast highways in Ontario, you need some good protection in the summer. I wouldn't consider using xW-30 in that engine in the summer unless VW recommends it for autobahn travel in hot weather in their Eurpeon manuals.
 
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