I went with ROYAL PURPLE. The reason is because the amount of research I did on it. If you watch HP TV, they talk about it occasionally. The did a dyno on a Camaro and there was a 9 hp gain.

As for the money, if you go longer without an oil change, I think that $6-10 a quart, every 12000 miles, I'm going to go that way. Money isn't an issue at that point.

 

i just switched to synthetic at the last oil change (at 11,690 miles). I'm at around 15,500 right now and i'll probably go another 2,000 before i get it changed again, so it'll work out i'm changing every 6,000. i feel comfortable with that, especially since i drive quite a bit of highway miles.

 

You guys will probably laugh at me on this, but here goes. Keep in mind, I'm currently changing oil between 5K and 7K. My last truck was a 98 F150. Reg cab, V6. I bought the truck with 28,000 miles. I traded it in on the DakotaI have now. The F150had162K. After the first year, I started changing oil every 10-12K. One time, I went 18K miles between changes. I always used Valvoline 5W30.I drove (and currently drive) about 630 to and from work each weak. All highway. So, roughly 2500-3000 miles per month. When I traded the truck in,it did not use oil, it did not burn oil, there were no wierd engine sounds, pings, knocks, etc. Mechanically, the engine was as good as the day I got it (as far as I could tell)

Is that a scientific study? Nope, but, just my personal experience on oil change intervals.

 

that's kind of what that study said, too. in their test, they ran the car about the same mileage (10-12,000) before changing the filter, than took it to 18,000 before changing the oil altogether, so i can see how that would work.

i just have a problem doing it at such long intervals on my truck. how often do you change it on your dakota? i assume you continue to use synthetic...

 

Currently I'm doing it between 5K-7K. Oh, and I've never used synthetic. Valvoline 5W30 has always been my flavor.

 

My VW runs synthetic and the factory says first oil changeat 5k miles then 10k and every 10k after that.

 

I changed my truck over to synthetic oil at 500 miles, and have since changed the oil and filter once a year. I would highly recommend running a synthetic oil, but the only problem is that the word synthetic is now a generic term that is being miss represented by most oil companies. At one time before 1995 synthetic oil was only PAO or Ester bases man made oils. After 1995 (thanks to Castrol) it now means petroleum bases or man made based oil. Motor oils are currently classified into 5 groups, Group 1 through 5. Group 1 petroleum oils are no longer used (old refining process). Group 2 petroleum oils are the ones currently being sold as petroleum oil (but they generally have some Group 3 so they can get API approval). Group 3 petroleum oils are refined at a higher temp and injected with Nitrogen (helps get more of the impurities out), Castrol syn, Vavoline syn, Mobil 1 all use this. Group 4 oils are man made PAO based oils Amsoil oils use mostly PAO oils with some Ester. Group 5 oils are man made Ester based oils, Red Line and MOTUL use mostly Ester based oils.

Tom

 

I bought my truck used and it has about 13,200 miles on it right now and the last oil change was at 10,000 miles, so I'm due for an oil change (by the 3k or 3 month philosophy). I think its safe if I switch to sythentic, but I wanted to see if there was any other downsides besides its price, anyway I believe I will be changing to synthetic in the coming weeks.

 

Yea synthetic is becoming more of s buzz word. here's some lite reading for y'all. http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/