I had a buddy ask me to take a look at his truck (late '90's Nissan 4x4 with KA24E engine) yesterday, his complaint was that the oil light comes on intermittently and the oil is full on the dipstick. He also thinks his gas mileage may be low.
First thing I observed is that the oil was dark black and appeared very viscous, almost too thick, but I thought it might be attributed to the cold. When I ran the truck, it felt very low on power and the oil light would come on at idle.
I asked him when the last time he changed his oil was, and he said about 4 or 5 weeks ago. The oil was much too dark to be that new, so I thought maybe he had excessive blow-by as it's an older truck and he's the type to skip out on maintenance until something breaks.
While I was going from the garage in the house, I spotted two green quart bottles of Quaker State "2-cycle engine oil". That didn't strike me as odd, until later it dawned on me that he lives in an apartment complex and doesn't own any two stroke equipment. I showed him the bottle and asked if that was what he used to change his oil, and sure enough, he had filled the crankcase with 2-stroke oil (and a Fram filter).
When I switched the oil out for a normal PCMO (Kendall GT-1 Semi-Syn with "titanium") the oil light still comes on at idle. It didn't do this before the 2-stroke oil fiasco. Any suggestions on what is causing this and/or what can be done to fix this and improve oil pressure?
Other than that the truck still feels underpowered and gets bad gas mileage, about 15mpg. Buddy thinks he got around 21-22 before this happened. No sign of oil burning. Truck has 200k on it, could this just be normal wear?
First thing I observed is that the oil was dark black and appeared very viscous, almost too thick, but I thought it might be attributed to the cold. When I ran the truck, it felt very low on power and the oil light would come on at idle.
I asked him when the last time he changed his oil was, and he said about 4 or 5 weeks ago. The oil was much too dark to be that new, so I thought maybe he had excessive blow-by as it's an older truck and he's the type to skip out on maintenance until something breaks.
While I was going from the garage in the house, I spotted two green quart bottles of Quaker State "2-cycle engine oil". That didn't strike me as odd, until later it dawned on me that he lives in an apartment complex and doesn't own any two stroke equipment. I showed him the bottle and asked if that was what he used to change his oil, and sure enough, he had filled the crankcase with 2-stroke oil (and a Fram filter).
When I switched the oil out for a normal PCMO (Kendall GT-1 Semi-Syn with "titanium") the oil light still comes on at idle. It didn't do this before the 2-stroke oil fiasco. Any suggestions on what is causing this and/or what can be done to fix this and improve oil pressure?
Other than that the truck still feels underpowered and gets bad gas mileage, about 15mpg. Buddy thinks he got around 21-22 before this happened. No sign of oil burning. Truck has 200k on it, could this just be normal wear?
