Oil recommendation for 2004 Subaru Outback 3.0l H6

[jumpr]

Answers to the questions:

1. What kind of vehicle you have: 2004 Subaru Outback 3.0l H6, 68,000 mi.

2. What your owner's manual says: 5w30 ILSAC GF-3, API SL

3. Where you live: Baltimore, MD

4. How you drive (easy? hard? fast? slow?): pretty easy; not very hard on the gas pedal most days

5. What your daily drive is like (short trips? long trips? city? highway?): take the train most days, but when I don't, I have a 38-mile round trip commute to work. It's about 60-40 highway/city, but sometimes the highway is worse than the city (D.C./Baltimore traffic...). Weekend driving is 50-50 city/highway.

6. Whether your car has any known problems: none that I know of, the H6 isn't known for HG issues.

Notes: I bought the car from my parents 3 years ago (they used Valvoline WB 5w30 exclusively with 3000 mi. OCIs, according to their dealer receipts), and it's seen a steady supply of 5w30 synthetic with 7500 mi. OCIs since I bought it (mostly unknown dealer bulk, but after moving into a house with a driveway, I did my first DIY change in December -- Castrol Syntec 5w30 and a PureOne filter).

My next 7500 mi. OCI is coming up probably in April or May, and I have two options in mind: GC 0w30 or PP 5w30. The 5w30 Syntec hasn't been great in the winter; cold startups sound noisy to me. Would GC help with that, and would it protect effectively in the hot, humid mid-Atlantic summers? I know I can't go wrong with PP, though, so which do you all recommend? If there are other options you all recommend I'm open to those as well.

 

[hate2work]

Either oil you mentioned would serve you well. As far as cold startup noise, you'll have to try one and find out. Sometimes it's the filter causing the noise, try a diff brand.

If it was my car I'd try using GC with an OEM filter.

 

[Nick R]

My cavalier loves the pp 5w-30, I dont know much about thse h6 enginea but I would be willing go bet the pp would work awesome. Also if you do t like the cold starts on the syntec gc probqbly wouldnt be much better since it is quite thick for its weight. Pp on the otger hand is essentially a 0w-30 labelled as a 5w

 

[WagonBoss]

If you want to stay with synthetic, you might want to look at Syntec 10W-40 on a cost performance with GC 0W-30. I like Maxlife 10W-30 in both my 4 cyl subies (on a 6k OCI) and it works with all my other OPE engines too, so 1 oil.

 

[sicko]

Both the oils you suggested should treat you well for 7.5k miles, and probably more.

Though I would do a used oil analysis (UOA) before taking it past 7500 miles. Non-Turbo Subarus are easy on oil, however the H6 is not as gentle on oil as the non-turbo 4 cylinder engines. So I'd do a UOA before taking it over 8k miles just to make sure the oil can handle it with ease.

 

[thunderchild]

I drive 100+ miles a day with my Subie. I use PP 5w-30 in the winter and PP 5w-40 European in the summer. Great car that will give you alot of life.