which year round oil...99 Subaru forester, low miles

[kmrcstintn]

1999 Subaru Forester; 2.5 L engine; auto tranny; AWD; @27,000 miles; this car is way out of warranty; dino oil changes so far (5w-30 or 10w-30)

what oil for year round use in Southcentral Pennsylvania?!?

 

[Sparkman]

I'm a big fan of synthetic 5w-40 in our Phase I EJ25. If yours is a piston slapper (some early Phase II's are famous for this, which yours happens to be), you might find ~some~ relief from a 40 weight. I also really like the 0w-30 German Castrol in this engine. In my experience ours sounds like a bucket of bolts on anything less than about 12 cSt. 27k miles on a '99, not even broken in!! We're getting ready to turn 200k on our '99 Outback, 2nd set of head gaskets.

 

[carock]

I will vote for any decent synthetic oil with a top weight of 30W. So a 10-30W, a 5-30W, or a 0-30W. According to Terry Dyson the Amsoil filters work really well too. You might want to give them a try.

 

[Dominic]

Im with carock. My personal favorite is Synpower, next up would be Syntec or Mobil1. I'm not one for putting money in EOM's pockets though

 

[Norm Olt]

Year-round? 5W- or 10W-30 Chevron Supreme, GTX, etc. I'd say ditto for any of the various & sundry CoNoCo-Phillips Semi-Synthetics (MC/Union 76 Super/etc...) if/when you can find them reasonably priced, or as much $ as you wish to spend on synthetics, allowing longer OCI's, naturally.

These are very reliable engines, many excellent analysis available on dino/semi-syn. All should be good for "normal" (3 to 5K) OCI's taking you well into the 200K total mile area.

IMHO. Cheers!

 

[coal68]

I use Amsoil, the 5-30 with the EAO filters. Not the same type of vehicle, however my oil analysis came back indicating the oil had thickened up, so that might benefit you in the long run with the piston slap issue as well as save you some cash.

 

[Islandvic]

Valvoline MaxLife 5-30

 

[williar]

Seems to me Sparkman has specific knowledge about this particular vehicle. Thus, I'd take his advice.

 

[Titan]

I have two Subaru's. Both rather new. Both run fine on Pennzoil Platinum 5-30. Acutally, I had one running on a mixture of Mobil 1 5-20, Exxon Superflow 5-20, and Delo 15-40 for a few thousand miles. These engines are for the most part reported to be easy on oil (unless you are having a problem with fuel/antifreeze/air filtration, of course). If it were mine and if it were a piston-slapper, I'd go with GC 0-30 or a synthetic 5-40.

 

[kmrcstintn]

what do y'all mean by a piston slapper and what are the indicators to determine the phenomenon?

 

[AndyH]

Quote:

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what do y'all mean by a piston slapper and what are the indicators to determine the phenomenon?

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Found this link which describes piston slap in a Subaru engine with a Google search for "Subaru piston slap":
http://resnet.uoregon.edu/~dwhite/pages/subnoises.html

 

[KJA426]

I'd try Mobil 1 5w-30 SM. Add a little VSOT if you want to beef up the additive pack.