How often would you recommend oil changes for turbos? Does it make a difference if it's a small engine turbo Optima? Believe I've been getting mine at 5k with synthetic blendOriginally Posted by JRB
How often would you recommend oil changes for turbos? Does it make a difference if it's a small engine turbo Optima? Believe I've been getting mine at 5k with synthetic blend
What are you thoughts on oil and intervals?
I am at 70k miles with a 2013 F-150 3.5 Ecoboost. I spent the money on the service package which uses the semi-synth Motorcraft oil. When I started towing a ~7000lb travel trailer I switched to the full synthetic Motorcraft. I would sometimes bring it in for the oil changes early, based on how much towing I did. Still, was in the 5000 mile range.
These are thoughts from when I used to frequent BITOG:
There are some things happening with turbo oil that might not be common knowledge, specifically Dexos 1 Gen 2. Even Motorcraft changed their formula to meet these new requirements IIRC. And my hoard of German Castrol is NOT a good oil for the direct injected turbo engines.
Now that I am out of that Ford service plan I just changed oil for the first time with ProDS from Walmart, comes in a 6qt box. I was going to follow the 7500 mile maximum interval or when I get to about 25% oil life.
Semi-synthetics or 'blends' are a total scam. Not uncommon to see only 10% or 20% of that 'blend' to be synthetic, and that often has dubious value anyway. Safest bet on any given car is to use the factory spec oil and a good quality oil filter (Napa Gold is a Wix, Wix branded, or Mobil 1) or factory genuine filter and change them both every 3-4k miles even if the owner's manual says 7500mi or 10k is fine.
But if your turbo Optima was my car, I'd go with the Mobil 1 5w40 European formula. That oil has done exceptionally well for me anecdotally in many similar modern turbocharged Asian and European engines, and what I currently use in my MR2 turbo, my Fiancee's Mini Cooper S, and I just moved my 300ZXTT over to it as well. SAE 5 when cold is great for startup protection and SAE 40 at operating temp is a great compromise between the efficiency of SAE 30 and shear strength + pumping losses of SAE 50.
The same 2.0L Turbo engine is shared with the Hyundai Sonata (I think it's the same car, actually) and after a non-car friends' Sonata fragged a turbo at very low mileage on 5w20, we moved it over to 5w40 and it lived happily ever after for another ~60k miles trouble-free until she traded it in around 90k miles. I told her to change it at 5k intervals, but I'm not sure if she did. I asked her if her MPG changed at all, and she said it did not but the car seemed 'happier' to her. YMMV of course.
If it were my truck, I'd stick with the Motorcraft Synthetic around 5k intervals. We had good luck with Walmart Super Tech on older workhorse trucks and cars with less complicated engines, but the sensitivity of the turbos and cam phasers to bad oil and old oil would personally give me pause about experimenting too much there. The cost difference between the Motorcraft synthetic and the ProDS isn't insignificant but an out-of-warranty turbocharger or cam phaser replacement will cover the gap for a good number of oil changes.
Blackstone and similar analysis processes are great for estimating block and bearing wear, as well as fuel contamination etc - but in my experience they DO NOT accurately show or predict turbocharger or cam phaser wear. I've pulled bad turbos and cam phasers on Subarus and Fords and other cars that had historically clean oil via analysis. In some cases they were just using the wrong oil (Royal Purple leading to turbos fragging on Ecoboosts in Mustangs, Focuses, and F150's) or they pushed it too long on oil changes too many times because they were gaming the oil life analysis, which I saw a few times with Ford 5.4L's.
One thing I do know of for sure, though, is that if someone stuck religiously to a 3k interval and used good filters, so long as you use a semi-decent oil for the application they'll be in very good shape for a long service life.
Going forward, though, I'm curious to see how the Amazon synthetic will play out. The cost has pushed a lot of people I know into trying it in some pretty spicy vehicles. Time will tell there, I suppose.
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@JRB
Company policy on changing oil (15 liter Cummins engines) is every 30k. If they can get away with that, is it crazy for me to think that my Taco, which is the naturally aspirated V6, is not going to be ok with 10k miles oil change intervals using Mobil1 synthetic oil and filters? Totally not arguing, just trying to make sense of it all, and get the most life out of the taco that I can.
Diesel and gasoline engines are kind of like apples and oranges.
Agreed. I get wanting to have a work surface inside the cab but wouldn't a column shifter be an easier solution than design a shifter assembly that folds?
Maybe a column shifter gets in the way of playing flappy birds on the ipad in the dash?
Seriously, I don't know why column shifters fell out of favor. How many people managed to run themselves over when Chrysler went to the twist knob shifter, which is the worst of all shifter designs. Sure it's compact, but it's like selecting your gear with an etch-a-sketch. No feel except "cheap".
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
It gets down to oil capacity - the more oil, the less beating the total oil fill takes every time you heat cycle it.
Most Tacos hold ~5-6qts of oil, and most of the ~15L Cummins etc engines hold between 11 *gallons* and 19 *gallons* of oil depending on the application, which of course has the aforementioned high component loading with low bearing speed that doesn't beat up oil nearly as much anyway. The high oil capacity also distributes the 'beating' the oil takes from temp spikes going through a turbo's CHRA, getting heat cycled, etc etc. Less oil capacity = shorter change interval. Some vehicles have unusually high oil capacities, like the LS7 7.0L Z06, and they can push it further out on oil change intervals as well because of it.
That all aside, the V6's used in pretty much every Tacoma since the 3.4L are basically cheat codes for surviving neglect. So long as you keep some kind of oil in it and the coolant generally stays in it and you're generally feeding it something resembling at least 85 octane gasoline, the only real problems you'll have are timing belts, water pumps, and O2 sensors. Your Tacoma would make a great candidate for a Blackstone analysis and gaming your oil change intervals off of that.
But in my experience, pushing it on oil changes is a losing game on pretty much any turbocharged or supercharged gasoline engine, with a particular note on cam phaser issues with Fords and Subarus.
@JRB
'nother Yota question...
I have an old 4Runner with the 3.4L engine. It is 23yo and has 217k miles. It runs fine, but the oil pressure, as reported by an electric Autometer gauge I installed, is a touch lower than I'd like. It's still within spec per the Toyota service manual (better than 9lbs at idle and reaching 45lbs at 3700rpm if I recall the spec correctly), but just barely. It also matches another metric I've read indicating at least 10psi per 1000rpm. The oil pressure idiot light has never as much as flickered while the engine is running (I've confirmed it works). I've used Mobil 1 Syn 10w-30 since buying the truck in 2002 and change the oil every 5k miles or yearly whichever is shorter (the yearly interval is shorter these days, I put maybe 3k on it each year).
So...Is the oil pressure ok? If not, would switching to the 5w-40 Euro spec oil help? I've read that using thicker oil to boost pressure is not a good idea (treats the symptom, not the disease), but I'd like to ensure a few more years of trouble-free operation before I go the route of a replacement (engine or truck). It doesn't get run hard, no towing or anything, just occasional recreational offroad use and as a hunting/camping vehicle.
Edited to correct the 10psi per X statement.
Chris
Last edited by mtnbkr; 06-30-2020 at 08:32 AM.
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