Took the leap
Yesterday I did an oil change on the Taurus. I went from dino droppings (mineral oil) 5w-20 to Amsoil 0w-20 full synthetic. The new oil and filter is good for 25,000 miles or one year, whatever comes first. It cost me $140 for 12 quarts of oil, three filters and a bottle of engine prep. That's 2 years worth of oil changes. By my estimate, in two years I would've changed my oil approximately 10 times at $20 a pop, with the Amsoil that's a $60 savings and only have to change once a year.
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What happens if you spring a leak? 
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the car has less than 40,000 miles on it, so I'm not worried about leaks. If oil has to be added over the year, the 0w-20 is compatible with any synthetic or natural 5w-20 or 0w-20 oil. Adding anything but Amsoil will reduce the service life of the oil in the engine. I only have about 20 miles on the car since changing over so I haven't noticed any performance or economy improvements yet. 0 -
I use Amsoil in everything I've got. I buy mine from Luther Hitt (aka Bulldog) at http://www.hittnmiss.com/ and even though he's in New York and I'm in Texas, it will be sitting on my porch in 2 or 3 days. He also sells it at dealer price, so I beat the heck out of local pricing. 0 -
A buddy of mine from work is a dealer so I got my stuff from him at dealer cost as well. 0 -
quote:Originally posted by jma2006
What happens if you spring a leak?
You lose a bunch of pricey oil.[;)]0 -
I use Mobil 1, and have since it came out for public use.
You'll be happy with the lower change frequency, slightly better mileage, and you will be thrilled (in five or ten years) with the lower wear on your engine.
Look into the gear lubes and trans oils, too for the best benefit.0 -
Exactly what is a bottle of engine prep, a before dinner drink for the Taurus? 15K is the maximum mileage I would on any synthetic oil, no matter who produced it, and those would have to be highway miles in a very moderate climate (not below freezing). No engine oil should remain in the crankcase beyond one year before being changed. The benefits of synthetic motor oils are tremendous but most of the savings from synthetics comes from reduced engine wear rather than reduced oil change intervals, although this is the single major selling point used for consumer sales.
Here is a post I made on synthectic oils some time back. I spent the first decade of my engineering career working as a petroleum engineer so you can take this information and do with it what you wish:
The type of oil you need should be determined by the type of driving you do. If you live in a rural area and take a nice 20 mile drive to work every morning at moderate speeds then very little demand is placed on your engine oil. If you struggle those same 20 miles in urban bumper to bumper/stop and go traffic or your car does nothing but short trips around town all day your oil is under much greater strain to perform. Petroleum is a useful lubricant but science can create lubricants which are much better, although these are always more expensive. If you operate your car or truck in low temperatures or in high heat under heavy loads (like pulling a trailer) your oil is going to be working very hard. Heat will start to break down mineral based motor oils at around 275F and if temperatures reach around 325F your oil has only hours to live. At around 400F mineral based motor oil is severely damaged and at 425F it will coke, cutting off lubrication to your engine and the end is near. Low temperatures are nearly as bad because condensation builds up in the oil and water inside your engine is never a good thing. 220F is an optimal temperature for mineral based oils since temperature is high enough to remove any condensation (water boils at 212F) but this also remains well within the operating heat range of the oil. Synthetics can handle high heat with very little trouble and running synthectic oil at over 300F is not an issue and while touching 400F for short periods will shorten a synthectic oil's life, it will not break down at that temperature.
Something that the oil companies don't want you to know is that oil itself does not wear out. In fact the hydrocarbon molecules in petroleum are tough little devils and that is why they have to be attacked so hard at the refinery in order to break them down (high heat and chemical cracking)! With a good quality oil filter and a good air filter there is very little dirt entering your engine oil so oil does not get "dirty" either. The change in color from gold (or green) to black is almost always a result of the chemical reactions that the detergent additives inside the oil under go. What does get used up in the oil is the additive package and if you buy plain jane motor oil you are getting just the minimum amounts of additives allowed in the API specs. Premium oils have more additives and can hold out longer before these additives are used up or deluted. If you could run your engine day and night at a comfortable room temperature of around 70F using a moderate throttle setting the engine's oil would last for thousands of hours of service before it would need to be changed. Of course no one has a car which lives in such a perfect world. Gas turbines, which operate in fixed locations, run at constant speeds for days on end and burn clean fules like propane or natural gas will likely never need oil changes at all until they reach their service interval and are taken out of service for inspection.
Long story short: 5,000 miles on synthectics is easy and 7500 miles quite possible. At 10K you need to examine what kinds of driving you have been doing to determine just how much longer the oil should remain in serivce. Under optimal conditions you could probably go 15K on full synthetics but I can't see risking the engine to save a few bucks by pushing the issue. I use Mobil-1 in all of my Mercedes and change the oil at 8000 intervals...BUT I always change the oil filter at 4000 miles (half way between actual oil changes) and then top up with more Mobil-1. You will never damage an engine by changing your oil too often and you won't hurt it by burning premium gasoline either, but most of the time you are just wasting your money by doing either and the oil comapanies just sit back watch their cash registers ring up more profit!
Another way to look at changing motor oil is by hours of service. The API mandates a test for motor oils which wish to be certified and if they pass the test they can be marketed in the United States and bear the API donut on the container. The test runs for 216 hours because this is considered the useful life on a mineral based motor oil. At an average spped of 45 mph 216 hours gets you about 10,000 miles, not bad at all. The probelm here is that very few of us drive at a constant speed of 45 mph for 200 straight hours! Most people in fact manage to cover perhaps 5,000 miles in 200 hours of passenger vehicle operation, or an average speed of 25 mph. If you are using mineral based motor oil and going longer than 200 hours between oil changes you may be pushing that oil to it's limit. There are a lot of differeing opinions on this but if you notice there are virtually no passenger vehicles sold with engine hour chronometers while nearly all large trucks and heavy equipment have these meters to track their service intervals. Automobile companies figure the average car buyer is a total idiot so it is much easier to just tell him to change his motor oil every 5,000 miles rather than have him accurately track the time the oil has been in service. This is the same reason they did away with all those useful gauges on the intrument panel- they just got you confused: " My God, my oil temperature is 225 degrees" (when in fact that is a near ideal operating temperature for motor oil). 300+ hours of serivce are not at all unusual for full synthectic oils but to keep to your car's warranty in effect you'll have to follow the manufacturers guidelines, even when using sythectic oil.0 -
https://www.amsoil.com/storefront/aef.aspx
It's an engine flush that Amsoil recommends when switching from a conventional oil to synthetic. The guy I ordered my ordered my oil through has been running Amsoil in his 1997 Jetta since he bought it 7 years ago. I'm just following his lead.0 -
$5.60 is not an outragous price. If you want to "clean" your engine internally (which cannot actually be done) you could have just poured in a $2 quart of Dextron II ATF (which has very high detergent content), run your engine at idle for ten minutes and then drained the oil. 0 -
kristov - that's some good information there. You wouldn't believe how many people don't believe that when you tell them they don't need to change their oil every 3000 miles. 0 -
I have run Mobil 1 for years in both vehicles. Change it at 5000 miles regardless of what Mobil says. I'm like Kristov...you can't change your oil too frequently, but you can let it go to long. My Jeep is due a transmission and differential change. Gonna go synthetic with them and see what happens. 0 -
I put molybdenum di-sulfide in the crankcase. 8oz every oil change. Car runs 30deg cooler, idles 200rpm faster. Super slick. I have a dohc manual lifter engine. Joe 0 -
Cat? Do you realize that your poor Taurus engine wasn't designed to run on 0 wt oil? I'm surprised that FORD even recommended 5w. But then again, you are in the Great White North. BBBRRRRRRRRR 0 -
No matter what kind of oil I use, it is changed avery 3000 miles. I use a synthetic blend. 0 -
I remember when I was on a pit crew for a NMCA driver. He was running a 600+hp engine and running a hair below 7 seconds in a quarter mile. When he signed his contract with the company (Amsoil) for a years supply of oil, he got up looked around and said, ok when can I be expecting delivery? They brought him out 12 qts of oil and a additive. He looked at them like they must be crazy. They said to drain the oil after every race, add a little additive and refill. [:D] He ran some 30 + races that year at a top speed of 204 mph. He still had 2 qts left over. 0 -
When you run amsoil for 25k miles, do they reccomend that you change your filter? 0 -
I run Pennzoil Platinum 5w30 in both my Tahoe and Grand Prix. I change it and the filter (the expensive one) every 5000 miles. Works pretty good for me.
Oh yeah, I have the Tahoe tuned kind of hot.0 -
quote:Originally posted by pitbud5
I remember when I was on a pit crew for a NMCA driver. He was running a 600+hp engine and running a hair below 7 seconds in a quarter mile. When he signed his contract with the company (Amsoil) for a years supply of oil, he got up looked around and said, ok when can I be expecting delivery? They brought him out 12 qts of oil and a additive. He looked at them like they must be crazy. They said to drain the oil after every race, add a little additive and refill. [:D] He ran some 30 + races that year at a top speed of 204 mph. He still had 2 qts left over.
30 races per season at 7 seconds per race means three and one half minutes of full throttle operation per year with a total distance traveled of 7.5 miles (30 races at 1/4 mile per race). Walmart label oil should be up to that!0 -
quote:Originally posted by kristov
$5.60 is not an outragous price. If you want to "clean" your engine internally (which cannot actually be done) you could have just poured in a $2 quart of Dextron II ATF (which has very high detergent content), run your engine at idle for ten minutes and then drained the oil.
Is that safe to do in diesels too? You mentioned that it cannot be done...so is there any benefit to doing this?0 -
quote:Originally posted by kristov
quote:Originally posted by pitbud5
I remember when I was on a pit crew for a NMCA driver. He was running a 600+hp engine and running a hair below 7 seconds in a quarter mile. When he signed his contract with the company (Amsoil) for a years supply of oil, he got up looked around and said, ok when can I be expecting delivery? They brought him out 12 qts of oil and a additive. He looked at them like they must be crazy. They said to drain the oil after every race, add a little additive and refill. [:D] He ran some 30 + races that year at a top speed of 204 mph. He still had 2 qts left over.
30 races per season at 7 seconds per race means three and one half minutes of full throttle operation per year with a total distance traveled of 7.5 miles (30 races at 1/4 mile per race). Walmart label oil should be up to that!
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I run regular old dinosaur poop oil,,in fact I run wal-mart brand which by the way is made by pennzoil,I change my on oil and I change it and the filter on the even 5k.yep every 5000 miles on regular old oil,easy to keep up with that way,I have 198,000 on my windstar,,I have 168,000 on my quad cab dodge and never a hitch,my last van had over 300k on it when I retired it and gave it away and never used more than a 1/4 of a quart between 5k oil changes and the people I gave it to drive it everyday so NO TELLING HOW MANY MILES ARE ON IT NOW.I am 46 and have done this with every vehicle I have ever owned and never lost and engine yet.I am sure synthetic oil is better but if I can not get at least triple the milage from it,,,whats the use of spending the extra money 0 -
Amsoil says 0w-20 is a direct replacement for 5w-20. Remember that the 0w only comes into play when the oil is cold.
The filter does get changed at the 25k or 1 year mark.0 -
I was not trying to run down Walmarts oil, only pointing out that in some applications very inexpensive branded oil (Wally sells his oil at very low cost) can be just as effective as the high dollar brands.
Most folks don't use their cars very hard at all and mineral based oils work just fine, but there are better oils out there and if you do use your car or truck hard then synthectics are the way to go.0 -
My '93 F-150 will stay on dino squeezing, with 150k anything else would be a waste. My '78 GS1000 can't run synthetic or oils with "friction modifiers." The oil is too slick, OE clutches and factory style replacement clutches will slip. 0 -
quote:Originally posted by catpealer111
Amsoil says 0w-20 is a direct replacement for 5w-20. Remember that the 0w only comes into play when the oil is cold.
The filter does get changed at the 25k or 1 year mark.
Actually it is the exact reverse, the oil only becomes 20 weight when the termperature rises, otherwise it is a 0w (w=winter) oil. Multi weight oils use a base oil (say 20w) and then add polymers which raise the viscosity of the oil as temperatures increase so a 20w50 is a 20 weight winter oil that acts like a 50 weight oil in higher temperatures. When the temperature falls it reverts back to 20w and you can get your engine cranking and the oil flowing in slightly below freezing weather. For artic conditions (below 0F) use synthectic oil (0w20 or 0w30) or a straight weight mineral oil (10w). In extremely high temperatures (100F) under heavy load (pulling a trailer) use a synthetic (15w50) or straight 50 weight mineral oil since it will handle slightly more heat than a multi weight mineral oil like 20w50.0 -
I will never to this day ever use engine flush again! In 1995 I was going to change my il in a 1990 GT Mustang, I bought one of those 1qt engine flush additives from AutoZone and used it per instructions. Car started knocking like a crank bearing went out. Turns out it ruined the bearing in the roller lifters. I now use Mobile 1 oils and filters in my Ford truck 0 -
Amsoil warranties all of their products. If you have an engine failure due to one of their products, they'll cover the repairs. 0 -
Castrol Syntec - 5W30.
" reverts back " - redundant.
Doug0 -
i had a 1965 chevy truck with a 230 C.I.engine, and i NEVER changed the oil or filter. when i sold the truck it had well over 200 K miles on it and still running fine[:0] 0 -
Without going into a Doctoral Thesis on Hydrodynamic Pressure, I just wanted to point out that your engine WASN'T designed for that weight oil. A lot of time and testing was done to determine the clearances on all of the bearings (main, rod, cam, etc) in that engine. I'm glad that Amsoil stands behind their product, but if I spun a main in my engine due to their oil, I'd want a NEW engine, not a rebuild.
But as a friend of all things mechanical, I have to realize that I'm not the one risking being stranded on the side of the road. nuff said.0
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