I just bought 5L's of 0W30 GC gold on sale at the local Walmart to run on my next oil change in my 1987 Chevy Caprice winter beater. It's a carb'd 307 Olds roller cam V8 with about 160k miles on it. I do my own oil changes outside in the cold and it will regularly be between -10 and -20C here this winter. Since I hate working in the cold I'm hoping to extend the oil changes as long as I can I'm just wondering how long I can safely go without getting it sampled. The car is well tuned and the choke is tuned as well as possible but there will still likely be more fuel dilution than there would be with fuel injection. I drive 35 minutes one way to work, mostly at around 50mph country roads about 55 mile round trip. I only let the car warm up for about half a minute before driving off. The car uses about a qt of oil in 2k miles. How long do you think I should let it go?
how long OCI's in winter 87 Caprice running GC
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How clean do you think the engine is? If it looks pretty clean and its had good maintenance, I would go the whole winter. I have a 94 Olds Ciera beater that I dont change the oil in the winter, and its not as cold here as it is there, but I only put about 10k a year on it. I pretty much try to avoid changing the oil in all the cars I maintain by changing everything when it starts to get cold.
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Any oil should last the winter ...unless you're in some place that winter like conditions never end. You've got a decent length to your daily drive for moisture and some fuel purging.
The engine has had average maintenance over the years. It's going to be about 5 months and 7500 miles. Not sure if I can bear to leave it in that long but i'll try. I'm normally the 3k mile kind of guy, but this engine isn't as important to me as my others. At least its about the best oil I could put in it.
Does that have the electronic feedback Rochester? I'm hoping it doesn't but I'm afraid it might.
For reference, I ran 0W-30 GC for 7300 miles in an '01 Volvo XC 2.3L turbo with 67k miles on the engine. Fuel dilution was 1% due to mostly city driving (it's a soccer mom mobile) yet the cSt@100C was still 11.97. This was in Aug/Sept with record 100°+F temps here for weeks straight. Granted this engine is way younger than yours but you'll be freshening up with a quart every 2k miles. I think you'll be fine.
^^ No since my car is spec'd for Canada it doesn't have the electronic qjet that all the U.S cars did from 81 up. Makes things much simpler to tune and maintain. When I bought the car, I checked the oil change sticker and it wasn't up to the 3k mile limit yet, the date was worn off the sticker so i couldn't see but judging by the amount of miles on it and how old it probably got an oil change once a year. Never over the mileage but still not often enough in my mind unless it was running a good synthetic.
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^^ No since my car is spec'd for Canada it doesn't have the electronic qjet that all the U.S cars did from 81 up. Makes things much simpler to tune and maintain.
You lucked out bigtime!
^^ No since my car is spec'd for Canada it doesn't have the electronic qjet that all the U.S cars did from 81 up. Makes things much simpler to tune and maintain.
You lucked out bigtime!
Yes I did. I bought the car for $300 and all it took was some minor tuning and no $$ at all to pass emmissions. My friend has a 90 Cadillac with a 307 electronic qjet and he's having [censored] trying to pass emmissions with it.
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