Castrol GTX High Mileage

[JParrott]

About a month ago it was time to change the oil in the minivan, so I trooped on down to Walmart and picked up a 5 Qt jug of Castrol GTX 5W-30 High mileage and stopped at NAPA for a gold filter. This is a 2000 Chrysler Grand Voyager SE w/ 3.3L Flex Fuel @ 95,000 miles. I've been pretty religous about doing this thing every 3000-4000 miles for an oil change, mainly becuase I purchased it with 68,000 on the clock and wasn't really sure about how it had been taken care of previously. Looked clean and drove good, but dealers can do wizardry with a rig these days. I've always fed it a steady diet of Valvoline Durablend 5W-30 with a Castrol GTX 5W-30 every now and then. This last time I decided to try the high mileage seeing as it was over 90,000 miles and see if it would help a little startup tick that had developed over the last 10,000 miles. Well, today the wife's leaving to go run around and I notice a decent puff of the blue smoke from the tailpipe on startup. I had her shut it off and peeked around to make sure no leaks or anything might have caused it. I found nothing and had her start it up again, and once more after just sitting for maybe 90 seconds, It gave the startup puff again. Could this be caused by the high mileage oil? It actually claims on the bottle to have superior burn-off protection (besides revitalizing seals and such). This engine has never had the puff before that I've ever noticed and uses somewhere between 1/4-1/2 Qt range every 3000-4000 miles. In my book this is very good. While a little smoke on startup isn't the end of the world, it means that guides/seals are starting to not perform very well and I'm starting to see the downside of this engines life. I was hoping to make at least 150,000 before running into this but it seems this is not to be. I just find it hard to believe that high mileage oil designed for engines over 75K would cause this. I've never had a UOA done on the engine and don't know if it would provide any insight as to what might be causing it. I wonder if an ARX treatment would help or hurt her at this stage.


*Edit*
I found this Spec sheet on Castrols website but I have no idea what most of this stuff means (if anything useful)

Castrol High Mileage .pdf Spec Sheet

[ October 23, 2005, 02:38 PM: Message edited by: JParrott ]

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Having a couple UOA's in a row with the same oil will tell the tale. I strongly suggest Terry Dyson's services for this.

I really doubt it's the oil causing the puff of oil causing the blue smoke puff. There's other factors at play. Perform a UOA or two and know without a doubt what's going on inside your engine.

 

[MarkC]

I agree, both about Terry and about the oil probably having little if anything to do with the blue puff of smoke.

 

[G-MAN]

If it's the valve guide seals, the HM oil may eventually correct the problem. An AutoRX treatment would surely help.

Valve seals being worn enough at 95,000 miles to allow oil to leak into the combustion chambers is not normal. I've got a 97 Olds mini van with 155,000 miles on it and I don't get any smoke at start up.

 

[azredliner]

My 1984 Toyota pickup was burning 1 quart per 300 miles. I went to the Castrol GTX High Mileage 20W-50, and I burn less than 1 quart every 1000 miles.
I had a 1988 Chevy S-10 with a guttless 2.8 V6. At the very first start-up, it had some bottom end noise (knock). I was using Penzoil, then switched to Valvoline. The noise was still audible, until I switched to Castrol GTX 10W-30.
My expereince has been very positive with Castrol products.

 

[Slick17601]

Chrysler V6 minivans are notorious for smoking on start-up. After a while it will smoke every time you takeoff.

 

[Audi Junkie]

Give it time.

 

[rg144]

Next thing is to use ARX. It's possible the HM oil seal conditioner can't reach the valve seals (due to dirt/varnish). ARX will clean and condition them. Yours sounds the same as my van which had 79K miles on it (when I bought it) and had serious neglect issues. BTW, what's it look like inside the oil filler cap?

 

[Triple_Se7en]

Before you do that, get some VSOT. It can be used with HM oils. Use the whole bottle for the entire 3-6K OCI. If the $3.99 investment fails, then go the Auto-Rx route. Be patient with the VSOT.... give it time to work.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

An entire bottle of VSOT for a single OCI? It has a cSt around 200 at 100°C! Wouldn't that be wayyyy to thick???

 

[TallPaul]

A whole bottle VSOT should bump him up about 2 cSt. BTW I am running a whole bottle VSOT on top of a load of 10w40. Running pretty good.

 

[edvanp]

For the winter, I'm running 3 quarts of 5w30 GTX HM + 2 quarts of GC 0w30 (plus 8oz of Valvolines HM additive, red bottle)in my 97 Regal GS (3800 SC) that has 133k miles. The only leaking I have is around the oil pan and it's very slow, doesn't show up on the pavement, no makeup oil ever needed. I'll run this until March which will probably be 6,000 miles. No complaints.

 

[ted s]

no retailer in Albany NY cares valvoine syntec oil treatment.

 

[Audi Junkie]

Can I mix M1 0w-30 and 5w-30? Are they that different?

 

[Triple_Se7en]

Despite it's increase in overall viscosity, VSOT claims to improve cold flow with a coating it leaves. Improves any weight of passenger vehicle oil supposedly.

========================================

Mixing new breed 0W's with old breed 5/10ws supposedly is very questionable for extended drains. Being thicker than a 5W/10W yet flows easier makes it unique from the rest of the oil weight lineups. Different modifiers & balancers may cut your oil life time because of the separation of properties that both contain when blending together.

I'm no scientist & don't know how true this is. I read stuff here & pass it on. I blend all the time myself. But I won't mix the 0Ws with other weights & won't mix full synthetics of group 4 & 5 like Mobil-1 and Pennzoil Platinum together either.

[ December 05, 2005, 01:00 PM: Message edited by: Triple_Se7en ]

 

[edvanp]

I can't imagine the big oil companies would produce an oil that can't be mixed with other grades. I like to mix, but I typically mix oil from the same company. I have for years and never have had a problem.

 

[caprice_2nv]

The oil consumption problem on Chrysler minivans is only with the mitsubishi 3.0L engine, which has always (and probably always will) have problems. I haven't heard of any problems with the 3.3L and have seen them with pretty high miles on them. Probably your seeing the results of neglect by the previous owner. Stick with the high mileage oil and get a UOA done.

 

[caprice_2nv]

^^ You may never have had a problem, and i'm sure it wouldn't hurt anything in the short term, but I don't think your doing the engine any favors.