94 Ranger 4.0 Smoking ALOT after oil change and a starter/flex plate question

warmachine5500 · Feb 28, 2015

94 Ford ranger 4.0L V6 has about 120K on it. This truck belongs to my uncle. I changed the oil for him today. He wanted to use full synthetic Valvoline 5W-30. I thought that would be fine since the Ford recommends 5W-30 for this truck. After changing the oil and starting it up we saw A LOT of white smoke coming out of the tailpipe. I'm thinking that because it's such an old engine, maybe the thin/light weight synthetic oil is getting into places where it's not supposed to go and burning. Should I use a thicker SAE oil? If so, what weight oil would you recommend? My gut tells me that will take care of the problem, but I thought I'd ask the experts here.

He also has a grinding noise coming from the starter. He told me his starter went bad, and he replaced it with a new one he had bought for his 92 Ford Explorer. That's when it began grinding. He tried to use a shim, but it made no difference. The starters looked exactly the same, and I'm pretty sure both of those vehicles have the same engine. I took the starter off and saw that both the teeth on the starter and the teeth on the flex plate are a little boogered up. If this is the right starter, could the flex plate be warped or cracked? Would that cause this issue? It still starts, but it sounds awful when it does.

Thanks for any input!

ridgerunner · Mar 1, 2015

If he has been using dino oil for many yrs then the synthetic is probably cleaning the engine and burning off all that stuff. It happened to me when I changed to synth. on my old 302 bronco. Run it for a while and then change the oil and cut open the filter and see what it caught. After that run a HM or high mileage oil. If he like Valvoline try Maxlife.

alwaysFlOoReD · Mar 1, 2015

As far as the starter, I have a suspicion that the following article may shed some light. I haven't had time to compare the v-6 starters yet,
http://www.bcbroncos.com/ford starters.pdf

adsm08 · Mar 1, 2015

For the 4.0 there are two different starter. There is one for the manual transmission and one for the auto trans. The difference is the size of the flex plate/flywheel. If you had the wrong one it will either hit the flywheel, or just barely grab the flex plate.

As for the first part of your question it shows a wonderful lack of understanding of how standardized units work.

I submit to you the task of measuring out a mile. If you do it with a ruler, a yardstick, or the odometer of your car a mile is a mile is a mile. The length does not change based on the instrument used to take the measurement.

Similarly synthetic 5-30 is not thinner than conventional 5-30. 5W-30 is a standardized method of denoting the viscosity of the oil in the bottle. Synthetics have a better filter process that means all the individual molecules are closer in size than conventional, and there are more detergents in there to clean, but one is not thicker or thinner than the other.

Finally, why would one waste money putting full synthetic oil in a 20 year old 120K mile engine when the manufacturer does not specifically call for full synthetic oil? You end up cleaning away deposits that are sealing leaks on your old crappy seals, causing those leaks to become leaks, and switching after 50k miles frequently results in burning oil. Plus that stuff is expensive.

Oh, one more thing. Synthetic is just as much a product of the crude oil drilled from the ground as is conventional, so calling one of them "dino" oil does not in fact differentiate it from the other.

warmachine5500 · Mar 1, 2015

So in short... use conventional 5W-30?

I wasn't suggesting that synthetic oil is "thinner" than conventional. As I understand it, synthetic flows better, and is perhaps getting to places in the engine that the SAE oil wasn't. Which is why I thought it might be burning the synthetic oil. I also thought that perhaps using a heavier oil, maybe 5w-40? Might help because it is an old engine. It's an idea, but I'm not sure it's a good one.

His explorer was an automatic as well. Which is why he thought it was the same starter.

94 Ranger 4.0 Smoking ALOT after oil change and a starter/flex plate question

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