Cleanest Engine Interior/Cleanest Oil

[ab_slack]

Engine Oil....

There is so much information on what is good or not and half the problem for me is knowing what is good info and what is not.

Tonight as I was picking up oil for my next oil change, I was thinking way back to a vehicle I drove when I first started driving. It had 60K miles on it and had a particularly clean interior. Oil always seemed to come out of it clean.

This was my dads car. A ford Escort, I think it was a 2.0L 4 cylinder.

Opening the oil fill, looking inside, it always looked very clean to me. Was the cleanest of any vehicle I drove.

He always spoke of using single grade oil. SAE30 for the summer and SAE20 in the winter. And that is what was used in this. Valvoline as I recall.

He used to say the advantage of the single grade is that it had higher sheer strength than multi grade. That it might wear a bit more when starting but once engine was at temperature it was fine and much less subject to breakdown.

I tried the same on my first new vehicle and yes it seemed to keep it really clean too...well..till the first time I went more than 5K (probably more like 10K)miles between oil changes and then it was never as clean again.

Now I haven't continued with that thru the years as the single grade oils seemed to vanish from the shelves of the places I was going and I guess I started to stick to manufacturers recommendations.

With all the marketing out there, really hard to tell what is what. I never really see discussion around using single grade oil so I wonder if there was any merit back then (early 80s) or any merit these days.

 

[Road Angels]

oil

Not another oil tread !!! just kidding, you can still by single grade at many napa stores there oil for the most part is refined by ashland oil products the same one who makes valvoline, unless we are taking about 40 years ago and pennzoil, witch was referred to sludge oil, do to there poor refining process, most all oils have a good detergent additives, except some of the old non detergents still out there, detergents are the first thing that breakes down in your oil so changing is a must, muti grades came along when they figured out ways to modify the polymere chain, I can remember changing my oil according to the time of season, and because of that it got changed more often, I even remember the old toilet paper filter add on canister, It used a regular roll of toilet paper in a canister plumbed in line to your oil system, when the oil got dirty you changed the roll of toilet paper and after about 100 miles the oil looked brand new, the bad is all the additives for wear and corrssion were gone, but the oil was clean again

 

[swynx]

I'm not sure that the special additives and all that crap really work. The previous owner of my truck changed the oil every 3k miles with K-mart special oil. The shop he owns bought it in bulk as it was cheap so that's what he used. My 4.0 has 300k miles anand it doesn't burn oil it doesn't smoke and it doesn't leak. Look inside and its clean.

I think as long as you change your oil before it gets dirty then your good to go.

If you scrub a part with dirty fluids that are only going to get dirtier your problems are only gonna get worse. Give it a continual rinse of clean fluids and it should stay clean. Called preventative maintenance for a reason.

Also after talking with the guy before every oil change he would run diesel through the oil for like 5 minutes then drain it out. Supposed to help clean up deposits.