Originally Posted By: KitaCam
Originally Posted By: zuluplus30
Moving my 97 Civic over to synthetic. Had a stead diet of dino every 4-5k for the first 148k of its life.
Haven't owned it long enough to know if it burns oil. Do I just take the plunge? Start with a HM syn? If I start with a HM am I stuck using it for the future. I grabbed a jug of M1 HM 5W-30 but now I'm second guessing it.
Safest route is to wait until you
KNOW the oil consumption
BEFORE changing to synthetic...be patient...if the level drops by a quart (F to L/O on the dipstick) or less in about 5k miles then stay with straight (non-HM) syn oil...more than a quart per 5k then go with HM...and stick with 5w-30.
I agree here.
Find whatever conventional is on sale and run the same interval the previous owner ran and monitor consumption.
If there isn't any then pick whatever synthetic has the nicest bottle and run it.
Find some used oil analysis of your specific engine here,or ask dnewton if he's got any,so you can get an idea of how long to run a synthetic oil. Typically for a vehicle with a 50/50 mix of city/highway driving you can run 10000 miles but that will get shorter with a higher ratio of city miles,so keep that in mind.
Or just stick with conventional. If it's gone this far with no problems and no leaks why potentially expose a issue where none presently exists.
Merkava_4 said:
You could always go with a gentle synthetic like Mag1/SuperTech. [/quote
A gentle synthetic?
What exactly does that mean?