Is 82000 Miles Too Late ?

[knunut]

Have over 82K, is it too late to change to Synthetic's and get a benefit? Thank's in advance.

[Silvertwinkie]

Originally Posted by knunut

Have over 82K, is it too late to change to Synthetic's and get a benefit? Thank's in advance.

It's not too late. Syn will work just as good as conventional oil, but still have some better properites than conventional.

I use synthetic because I have new vehicles that get used under what the manuals consider severe service. I also use it because it has better properties under extreme heat, cold and sludge buildup. That said, if you plan on holding onto the vehicle forever, and will tow in mountains, or extreme cold, sure, but at 82k, the only benefit to you would be the properties of heat and cold. I had 170k on a 1980 307 and only used conventional oil. Though the car didn't do any heavy towing, the body was rotting off, but the engine never burned a drop of oil and the engine would have run at least another 100k it ran that well.

[jcanavera]

I don't know the age of your tow vehicle but with today's engines, I don't consider 87K a lot of miles. On my older tow vehicle I went to semi-synth, which I think gave me a little better protection than dino only.

For all intents my advice would be to go with synth, watch the consumption on that first go around. If you don't see any abnormal usage, stay with it. On my current tow vehicle which I bought new, I did semi-synth on my first oil change and then synth there after. I don't do more than 6,000 miles annually so that first change came about because of time rather than mileage.

The rule of thumb I've always heard was to break it in with dino, if it comes that way from the factory new. Once broken in synth should be fine.

Jack

[rickandsandi]

Originally Posted by knunut

Have over 82K, is it too late to change to Synthetic's and get a benefit? Thank's in advance.

It's never too late! Even after eliptical wear has set in synthetic will help prevent further wear. In addition, the new synthetics help engines run a little cooler because of the loss of friction and breakdown. For the first few changes it is best to stick to 3K changes to allow for flushing out the old and any residue. After that changing every 5K will be fine for your older engine.