saym14
Full Access Member
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Quick Question - Oil
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welcome to the internet. lol
car forums and oil questions start wars.
The factory maintenance schedule calls for 10,000 mile oil changes. The % oil life indicator is based on that interval, plus some real time metrics to account for heat, and severe duty. At the bare minimum, you must at least follow that % life indicator.
Most of us, tend to do the 1st oil change around 3,000 miles to get the break in oil out of the system.
After that personally, I tend do do my oil changes when the % life indicator gets to about 25% life remaining. Putting me on a 7,000 mile interval roughly. I only use full synthetic mobil 1, and FOMOCO oil filters.
I have been using Mobil 1 since 1992, and extended intervals (5k-8k) since 2000. around 800,000 miles and never any oil related issues doing this.
Read this thread and the hundreds of others on the interwebs and find whats right for you.
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stolleee
Active Member
I would change it. Ford oil is a blend. They use bottlers to blend their oil and the industry in that segment allows them to use 99% conventional and 1% synthetic and call it semi or syn blend. That is why I switched over to full synthetic at the first change and plan to change at 5K miles thereafter.
The reason being that retains its viscosity much better compared to other oils and it being a weight heavier to begin with. So after some use it will loose some of its viscosity and be closer to a 5w-30 weight compared to a 5w-30 oil breaking down and being more like a 5w-20 oil. All oils loose viscosity due to wear and heat, the rotella oil is very good at retaining its initial Viscosity after some use since it was made for diesels which almost always have a turbo. Using the oil to also cool a very hot turbo breaks it down even more and the oil was made with that in mind.
Here's the summary from my latest Blackstone report with ~6700 miles on Mobil-1 5w30 full synthetic, oil monitor at 33% remaining. Mind you there's only a bit over 18K on this motor, which is why a few metals are still trending down, most notably iron, copper, manganese and boron. Aluminum has been steady at 5/4/5 over the last 3 reports. SUS viscosity at 210F was 58.3 (expected 55-63) and cSt viscosity at 100c was 9.72 (expected 8.8-11.3) so the oil isn't getting thinned out w/time or miles at this point either. Fuel contam has consistently been <0.5% and antifreez at 0%:
"This was a longer oil run than last time, but we'd hardly be able to tell just looking at the metals, as they pretty much all held steady or came down some. That's a great sign that all is well in terms of internal wear, so there's no reason to think a mechanical issue is on the horizon. We didn't come across any contamination from fuel or coolant, and the viscosity is on target for 5W/30. The TBN (2.3) is still well above the 1.0 cut-off, meaning the oil wasn't close to running out of available additive. You've got a
great thing going here, so just keep it up."
Again, this was mostly open highway driving, including a 3500 mile trip Seattle-kanab UT-Death Valley-Seattle. Looks like 7500 miles +/- depending on how much city driving I do will be my change intervals UNLESS for some reason the oil monitor drops below 25% earlier, at which point I'd change it. As I said before, wanting to keep the turbos happy I want some cushion between when I change the oil and when the additives are 'exhausted'. and 2.3 seems pretty reasonable. I've done Blackstones on my first 4 changes now, and with the numbers all looking good will probably save some $$ and start doing them every other change i.e. roughly 15k mile intervals.
Interestingly, the only test that showed viscosity below expected was the FIRST change from the factory fill!
"This was a longer oil run than last time, but we'd hardly be able to tell just looking at the metals, as they pretty much all held steady or came down some. That's a great sign that all is well in terms of internal wear, so there's no reason to think a mechanical issue is on the horizon. We didn't come across any contamination from fuel or coolant, and the viscosity is on target for 5W/30. The TBN (2.3) is still well above the 1.0 cut-off, meaning the oil wasn't close to running out of available additive. You've got a
great thing going here, so just keep it up."
Again, this was mostly open highway driving, including a 3500 mile trip Seattle-kanab UT-Death Valley-Seattle. Looks like 7500 miles +/- depending on how much city driving I do will be my change intervals UNLESS for some reason the oil monitor drops below 25% earlier, at which point I'd change it. As I said before, wanting to keep the turbos happy I want some cushion between when I change the oil and when the additives are 'exhausted'. and 2.3 seems pretty reasonable. I've done Blackstones on my first 4 changes now, and with the numbers all looking good will probably save some $$ and start doing them every other change i.e. roughly 15k mile intervals.
Interestingly, the only test that showed viscosity below expected was the FIRST change from the factory fill!
saym14
Full Access Member
So you probably could have run that oil the other 33%?
OP. Take a note here , there is no such thing as a quick question about Oil
Just a point of clarification for everyone; the "W" in the viscosity label is for "Winter", not "Weight". This signifies that the oil is acceptable for use in cold weather.
I follow your theory, however I would be very interested to see oil analysis results that support it. Modern synthetics don't suffer from viscosity breakdown like previous generations of conventional oil, which means a 5W-30 oil should remain a 5W-30 oil throughout the oil change interval. Based on zemuron99's oil analysis, his viscosity range was right in specification, which indicates that viscosity breakdown did not occur.
As far as the turbos, all modern turbos they are liquid cooled (coolant flows through them). Thats not to say they are't still hard on oil, quite the contrary, but its nothing like the turbochargers from decades ago that were literally cooled by nothing but oil. Still best to run a quality full synthetic oil in any turbocharged engine of course.
I follow your theory, however I would be very interested to see oil analysis results that support it. Modern synthetics don't suffer from viscosity breakdown like previous generations of conventional oil, which means a 5W-30 oil should remain a 5W-30 oil throughout the oil change interval. Based on zemuron99's oil analysis, his viscosity range was right in specification, which indicates that viscosity breakdown did not occur.
As far as the turbos, all modern turbos they are liquid cooled (coolant flows through them). Thats not to say they are't still hard on oil, quite the contrary, but its nothing like the turbochargers from decades ago that were literally cooled by nothing but oil. Still best to run a quality full synthetic oil in any turbocharged engine of course.
I did not know that about the W. Thank you. Learning has occurred.
Both my oil tests have shown the viscosity “fail” at 5k miles.
13.4 cSt and 9.0cSt.
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Interesting...what oil, viscosity, and operating conditions?
@FordTechOne None the less you still the oil going through the hot turbo. I can try to find my Blackstone lab samples from my Subaru. I used factory oil, Mobil one, royal purple and rotella. All but the rotella failed on the viscosity.
I do drive my cars quite hard though I should note hence the 3k mile oil changes.
I do drive my cars quite hard though I should note hence the 3k mile oil changes.
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