synethic oil = better mileage in truck?

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A while ago on a (hot rodders .com) forum a rather respectable gent had said if you run synthetic fluids all through your vehicle your gonna get better mileage. Even 1 mpg for my expedition would be neat.

The only thing i question, is it gets 116 here in my area, and the coldest day last year was 30° many o nights its 100° at midnight.

Would running a synthetic oil give the motor more pep and help promote better mpg or is my area the type where i may wanna run a thicker oil ? I know everyone says manufacture knows best. Mine has about 95k on the ticker and the cap says 530. Im considering to either go full synthetic next change or to a high mileage oil, if 100k is considered high mileage anymore....
 
You probably won't see much difference but you would be able to extend drains and save a few bucks that way if you used an extended drain oil (Mobil 1 EP or Amsoil Signature Series).
 
I'd stick with plain M1 5w30. Personally you can try and see if you get 1mpg better and you might but I doubt the savings are worth it unless you extend the interval, which us where you will save the money.
 
My understanding after my short time here at bitog is that you could possibly get better mileage with a full synthetic.

I think that you are more likely to see a small increase in mileage if you went with a 0W30 like M1's 0W30 AFE, marketed for better fuel economy. At the least a full synthetic or 0W30 will allow for better flow at start up for more protection.
 
"Energy conserving" rated oils save a miniscule amount of energy. Whether synthetic or not.

95k is hardly "high mileage," no need to change to an HM oil. No real reason NOT to- but then most HM oils are not rated as "energy conserving" so that's kinda counter to the first half of your post.

High temps are a good reason to run synthetic oils- typically lower oxidation rates and better NOACK numbers can be had from the modern synthetic process base stocks. If it were my vehicle and I wanted good high-temp protection and maybe a tweak more efficiency, I wouldn't shy away from a good 0w30 oil like M1 AFE.
 
You would have to change grade to improve mpg. Say, going from 10w30 to 0w30 might save a little. Not really enough to measure though.

Or use 0w20 instead of 5w20 if thats what your vehicle calls for.

Other factors affect mpg a lot more. Tire pressure/brand, driving style and vehicle loading all have a lot more effect than any oil ever will.
 
Originally Posted By: leroyd92
A while ago on a (hot rodders .com) forum a rather respectable gent had said if you run synthetic fluids all through your vehicle your gonna get better mileage. Even 1 mpg for my expedition would be neat.

The only thing i question, is it gets 116 here in my area, and the coldest day last year was 30° many o nights its 100° at midnight.

Would running a synthetic oil give the motor more pep and help promote better mpg or is my area the type where i may wanna run a thicker oil ? I know everyone says manufacture knows best. Mine has about 95k on the ticker and the cap says 530. Im considering to either go full synthetic next change or to a high mileage oil, if 100k is considered high mileage anymore....


There are many reasons to use synthetic oil. Better MPG is not one of them. I doubt you would be able to detect any increase. In theory, yes, in the real world, very iffy.
 
Well you have summed up the heat factor around here accurately. My personal advice is to buy what is on sale and adjust your OCI to what you are comfortable using.
 
ILSAC GF5 "conventional" oil must provide a improvement over a test PAO synthetic. I wouldn't run synthetic syn in a diff - gear lubes have high VI and low PP (and low flash) already and are more polar than synthetic for better lubricity.
Medium duty 4x4 are another story. Some have shown 1mpg+ going through all lubes with pricy synthetics. Do the math and see if it works.

I average 37mpg on my commuter so IDK about improved fuel mileage. I run pseudo-syns to have better power by keeping the rings unstuck and unvarnished.
21 mpg is terrible for a commuter - I would loose that car unless I loved it.
 
I agree with most people here- You'll save money not in MPG but in being able to extend the drain interval.

Go for which ever synthetic is on sale and sleep like a baby at night.
 
Cool guys...

I was just wondering what happens in the real world...

In all honesty, i baby the truck as it is, which is why i was wondering about synthetic.

I was practically thinking about either going full synthetic for economy or hdeo 1540 for protecting....

I think next go ill just get the supertech full synthetic 530 and after 7500 miles send off a sample to black stone.
 
You could try using synthetic fluids through the entire driveline.
You might see some consistent improvement in fuel economy.
A 1 mpg improvement would be huge in percentage terms for an Expedition, since fuel economy improvements of any sort are difficult to find.
Anyway, I'll bet that the diff or diffs and transfer case (if 4X4) are about due for a change anyway and the tranny probably is as well, so you wouldn't be losing much should your efforts fail to give that magical improvement in fuel economy.
OTOH, if you tried driving the thing really easily, with light acceleration, coasting to red lights and avoiding the rich part of the fuel map in highway running, I'd bet that you'd see an improvement of more then 1 mpg without going to the expense of synthetic fluids at all.
 
Truck is 2wheel drive. Just changed the tranny fluid with mercon v which i was told is synthetic.

Someone in the motorcycle forum had made the claim results from blackstone labs show mobil 1 motorcycle 2050 and one of the hdeo oils ( i think rotella ) and since im easy on the gas and already coast as much as possible (eco minded) maybe an hdeo may be good for when i tow the boat in the 115° heat.

Its all up in the air. I have cheap ST 530 in it atm anyway.

If theres a good option for mpg or saving $, ill do it.
 
No way would I go to 20w50 (nor even an HDEO, really) in a Ford Modular. The ones spec'd for 5w20 run forever even under severe use. Thick oil probably does more harm than good for them, very obviously a thin-oil loving engine design.
 
Originally Posted By: 440Magnum
Thick oil probably does more harm than good for them, very obviously a thin-oil loving engine design.


How so ?

There's obviously evidence for the claim (that doesn't include a pile of failed engines, for sure)
 
I run synthetic in everything, trans, t-case, diffs, PS fluid, engine.

Per how much will your mileage improve, difficult to measure unless you have long term data before and after.

As mentioned I would do it just for the extra protection at high temps.
 
I can no longer find the website, but there were a couple of guys that documented their fleets' mpg when switching to Amsoil. I'm not talking just the engine, but the transmissions, differentials, everything. They did notice an increase in mpg.

On the (sold) Grand Cherokee, using synthetic motor oil alone gained about 1mpg.

As always, YMMV.
 
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