Everyone's Favorite Subject (Oil)

[IRON-E]

Castrol high milage 20/50, quiets the valves for a good 2 months.

[dnguyen1963]

Diesel oil generally has more zinc additive, which is good for good old engines like M20.

Mike - 5W30 synthetic is too thin for these engine. You are seeing leakage because the new oil has a lot more detergent; thus, it cleans the engine too well and now your engine is leaking. I have used Rotella for years without any bad experience.

[15Michaeljoseph]

Everyone's Favorite Subject (Oil)

10w30 dino year round if i can help it... Felt lazy at the beginning of winter and took it to an indie for a change, I'm worth it right? guy puts in 5w30 synthetic and i'm seeing a little seepage around the head gasket. granted PO of the engine put in a VR gasket but still. I'll be fixing that hopefully in the summer when school's out.


Also, I've heard bad things about tossing rotella in a regular gas engine.... interested to hear more about this myself.


--Mike

[LowR3V'in]

Can you tell me why joseph?
You just linked me to shell ad.

[Joseph~]

Why would you use a diesel oil in your m20?

Spend a little time researching ROTELLA, then you will understand why.

http://www.shell.com/rotella.html#vanity-4e94e803561306b0568aec7f51af2643

Regards

Joseph

[Good & Tight]

Why would you use a diesel oil in your m20?

I've been using RotellaT 15w-40 in my turbo M30 with great results. Granted running E85 burns cleaner than regular gas which keeps the oil cleaner (doesn't get black)

[LowR3V'in]

Why would you use a diesel oil in your m20?

[dnguyen1963]

Farm and Fleet 15W40 diesel oil works fine for me...$8 per gal.

[mtnbimmer]

After reading some of the informative responses... going with 10W40 Mobile/Royal Purple

After reading most of the uninformed responses, I'll stick w/M1 0W-40.

[indecline]

After reading some of the informative responses... going with 10W40 Mobile/Royal Purple

[Kevinl]

Delvac 15w40

[Lugnuts]

Penrite HPR10 - full synthetic 10W50.

Cheap down here as it's Australian oil - good product.

Freshly rebuilt engine. Running Redline 5W-40. Seems to do the job. Don't have much to compare it to.

Thinking I'll switch to Penrite 10W-50 at the next change.

[slothonaleash]

300k+ mile m20b25:

20w50 castrol dino when it's warm/hot outside
10w40 when it starts to dip below 40 degrees F or so--really helps out with cold starts.
Frequent oil changes

I'll be switching to synthetic after a rebuild! (Amsoil if I can get my hands on it)

I wait until the car is well out of the blue on the temp gauge to go over 1/4 throttle.

[estoguy]

With that Castrol Edge 5w50, I've had no cold start issues. It's 5w for the cold starts, but still a 50wt oil. I run it all year. last year, we had an extremely cold winter here in Ontario, and I had no problems. I stick to the following for my start up routine: Start, let car idle up to 2 minutes, depending on ambient temperature. I start off slowly, keeping revs below 2000. Once in 5th gear, I keep the car around 1500-1700 RPM. Now I'm a bit more anal here. I wait until the temp gauge gets to the first thin white tick before driving normally. I know that the "normal" temp range is anywhere beyond the blue, but like I said, I'm anal about it, especially in cold temps.

[raudonis]

Autodata specifies semi synthetic 10W-40 for all m20s. Of course this is bare minimum. Full synthetic is always better than semi or mineral. For people bitching about it being an old engine I have 1 thing to say - m20b20 from 1977 and m54b30 from 2006 run exactly the same main bearings and conrod bearings with exactly the same tolerances, go figure.