Good Motor Oil
Good Motor Oil
Here's my situation, I have a 90 240sx with 224000 miles on it. It has the timing chain rattle and doesn't seem to run well with 30 Sae oil. What's a good oil and viscosity for my high mileage car?
I use valvoline 5w-30 in everything I own and have since I first started driving 20 yrs ago. I have had no ill effects from doing so. because I am a technician I am rather lazy on changing my oil on a regular basis. I have gone several times beyond 20 k without changing my oil. I recently got rid of a a vehicle I had been driving 14yrs subjecting it to the abuse of daily 70 mile commutes going the 20 k several times over without an oil change. I decided to tear down the engine to see if the years of doing this did any damage to the engine. I was quite suprised to see how clean the engine was internally after all those years. No it was not synthetic it was plain old regular 5w-30. Now my moms old 81 camaro which she bought in 83 is still in my hands she gave me the car back in 96. All the time she had it she had the oil changed fairly regularly , not faithfully at 3000 miles but certainly not beyond 5000 or 6000 miles. she swore by pennzoil. when I recieved the car it had a few oil leaks which is pretty normal for an old car. when i removed the covers to reseal it I was shocked by what i would call black rocks all over in the engine and the coating that had built up on the covers. I cleaned the covers but did not disturb the "rocks in the valve area for fear that it might go through the engine and plug ports. The engine for the car is now dissassembled and laying on my floor in the garage. I did this so I could determine why 2 yrs ago it lost oil pressure and seized not one but 2 rod bearings. any guesses as to why i lost oil pressure??? that was a retorical question.
My point is unless your are driving a race car oil grade really isnt relevant.Brand is!
Use whatever grade the manufacturer recommends. I however recommend you use valvoline for better protection. That is based almost in whole on the experiance I just shared.
My point is unless your are driving a race car oil grade really isnt relevant.Brand is!
Use whatever grade the manufacturer recommends. I however recommend you use valvoline for better protection. That is based almost in whole on the experiance I just shared.
I use valvoline always as well, unfortunately Ive only been driving almost a year so i cant tell you any miracle stories :pface. I believe PalmerWND has been preaching about the great detergent valvoline has come up with, and it definately is true.
I personally use 10w40 on my 100k mile KA engine, I do this because I feel the previous owner didnt have the best oil change habits (crappy normal castrol oil with extended drain intervals and all the parts under the valve cover are deeply stained) so the rings might not be in the best shape.
In response to NISTECH saying 5w30 is good, well it is but you dont know how the previous owner treated the car. Im sure if you used a good quality 5w-30, like valvoline or mobil, from day one you could keep on running it. My moms 98 malibu LS has 200k miles on it, and still runs 5w30... aside from some lifter noise no problems, and 0 oil burn off!
Quote »It has the timing chain rattle and doesn't seem to run well with 30 Sae oil. [/quote]Now in response to the first post (little sidetracked maybe?
) If you have the timing chain rattle, thicker oil may quiet it alittle but it wont stop the damage it is doing to whats left of your tensioners. Best thing to do is replace the timing chain and tensioners (if its the first time its being done on a 200k engine then your oil apparently is doing quite a good job!).
How do you know it doesnt run well with 5w30? If you are experiencing oil burn off or alot of lifter tap then it definately needs a thicker oil. But you dont want to go too high if you live in an area where it drops below 50 Ferenheight. 50 weight oil is too thick at those temps for the KA. Best you can do in that case is 40 weight.
Quote »Would that be synthetic or regular 5w30? Valvoline of course!![/quote]
I used the semi synthetic durablend for a while, but found that there was no reason to pay for higher quality synthetic oil if you do normal oil changes (3k miles). At 3k miles you arent even stretching the limits of normal dino oil, so there no reason to go towards synthetic.
If your engine is always being reved high and raced, or you are opting for extended drain intervals, i would recommend synthetic blend. For extremely high drain intervals and hard core racing, nothing but synthetic.
I personally use 10w40 on my 100k mile KA engine, I do this because I feel the previous owner didnt have the best oil change habits (crappy normal castrol oil with extended drain intervals and all the parts under the valve cover are deeply stained) so the rings might not be in the best shape.
In response to NISTECH saying 5w30 is good, well it is but you dont know how the previous owner treated the car. Im sure if you used a good quality 5w-30, like valvoline or mobil, from day one you could keep on running it. My moms 98 malibu LS has 200k miles on it, and still runs 5w30... aside from some lifter noise no problems, and 0 oil burn off!
Quote »It has the timing chain rattle and doesn't seem to run well with 30 Sae oil. [/quote]Now in response to the first post (little sidetracked maybe?
) If you have the timing chain rattle, thicker oil may quiet it alittle but it wont stop the damage it is doing to whats left of your tensioners. Best thing to do is replace the timing chain and tensioners (if its the first time its being done on a 200k engine then your oil apparently is doing quite a good job!).How do you know it doesnt run well with 5w30? If you are experiencing oil burn off or alot of lifter tap then it definately needs a thicker oil. But you dont want to go too high if you live in an area where it drops below 50 Ferenheight. 50 weight oil is too thick at those temps for the KA. Best you can do in that case is 40 weight.
Quote »Would that be synthetic or regular 5w30? Valvoline of course!![/quote]
I used the semi synthetic durablend for a while, but found that there was no reason to pay for higher quality synthetic oil if you do normal oil changes (3k miles). At 3k miles you arent even stretching the limits of normal dino oil, so there no reason to go towards synthetic.
If your engine is always being reved high and raced, or you are opting for extended drain intervals, i would recommend synthetic blend. For extremely high drain intervals and hard core racing, nothing but synthetic.
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allens 240sx
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Mon Jun 30, 2003 5:58 pm
- Car: Basketball, hooking up the 240 and hanging out.
i use...
i use GTX High-Mileage (green bottle) 20-50w in my car which is a 91 240sx and it has somewhere around 163,000... seems to be good for my car and i heard 20-50w would be better to put in for more older cars (of course thats just what i heard, but not the reason i put it in my car):D
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bentsprocket
- Posts: 71
- Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2003 5:56 am
If your car has high mileage doesn't mean upgrade to thicker oil. it's a good rule of thumb to see how low it is between oil changes also. That is to check to see if it burning or leaking. If you car leaks alittle such as is wet underneath but don't puddle on the ground then it's safe to go with 10w-30 maybe 10w-40. Remember the "w" stands for winter not weight. Something you should realize is thicker oil takes away gas mileage. If something is thicker(heavier) it takes more effort to move it. I just replaced ever seal on me car and run Valvoline 10w-30 cause it's what's been put in there since I've owned it. I will not go to 5w-30 cause the car is set in on 10w-30 NO OIL LEAKS NOW. I will say this never go down in oil weight only maintain or increase to your desire(it's your car). As far as adding syntheic oil why put expensive stuff in your car that will leak or burnout. Most blends and syn's have a tendency to break down the detergents of common oil and create oil leaks in engine's. So if you started with synthetic stay with it. DO NOT switch cause it will cause leaks. I worked for Texaco for 3 years and that's what I got to offer. Also don't add additives such as "NO SMOKE" cause oil is designed to protect and deter from such things user abuse is what cause's these problems. One last thing It is safer to go only 3000 miles or 3 months which ever comes first on any oil after that it start to lose it's abilities to function properly.
Oil grade is also a bit dependant on your climate. It get so cold here in the winters, 5w30 is better to use.
You could really here the valvetrain start clacking in my 93 Explorer when I had it, I originally used to put 10w30 in...up until the first winter I had it up north. For the first while after she was started she would phase in and out of clacking....
Put in 5w30 and never heard it again. But hey, it gets so cold here in the winter, it actually gets difficult to turn the key in the ignition.
You could really here the valvetrain start clacking in my 93 Explorer when I had it, I originally used to put 10w30 in...up until the first winter I had it up north. For the first while after she was started she would phase in and out of clacking....
Put in 5w30 and never heard it again. But hey, it gets so cold here in the winter, it actually gets difficult to turn the key in the ignition.
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bentsprocket
- Posts: 71
- Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2003 5:56 am
Well Knowlege it really depends on how long you've ran it with 20w-50 and the brand. Also it depends on the reason you put it in the first place. If you just put it in to have it then it will be ok to change back to 10w-30 or 40. However, you can run into problems with the detergents in the same oil brand but different winters and weights. Something new I learned this week. I will say you should use your judgement from the forum and decide if it's ok to make the change back. It's your car and you pay for the gas. Just put some thought into it ok. I don't know the condition of your car and think if no oil usage between changes then I say ok but that also depends on your location. If you have the stock hood check out the oil chart on the left side I believe and go from there.
Sorry for the delay...
Sorry for the delay...
240dreams wrote:is 20w-50 too thick?
Not too thick in a KA24 in summer but too thick in winter.If you wanna not pay for synthetics (MOBIL1 0w-40 is an outstanding winter oil that still gives good HT/HS at speed or can be used as a great summer oil for non turbos), go with a 5w-30 as a winter oil.
Dino Oil brands that have recently given good UOA's in Nissan engines are Castrol GTX, Pennzoil and ValvolineDurablend.
For winter all of those in 5w-30, for summer in a non turbo appliucation in 10w-40, in a turbo application in a 50 weight.,
Do a search for "oil*" many threads on oils here.
Fred...
