Oil Change Intervals

[Maysik]

What are the opinions on engine cleaners?

If I was to purchase a car that has had the same oil in for 10 years and the oil is filthy, would these engine cleaners:

1/ Do anything?

2/ Would they damage anything?

I see some recommend running the car for no more than 15 minutes with the cleaners in.

Would you use them in a modern car such as an alloy V8?

Just curious, thanks.

[Kiwivan]

Do not use an engine flush! You could block the oil pick up
Run a good oil and just change regularly

Cheers Kiwivan

[Maysik]

No worries thanks for that.

Is that because it will dislodge sludge and that gets in the pick up or is it the actual chemicals that block it?

[axistr]

I completely agree. We run 2 tugboats with 3 x V12 Caterpillar engines, one vessel has centrifuges and one doesn't. 600 Litre sumps so high volume of oil, but we get twice as long for servicing on the engines with spinners because we remove the carbon and crap. Ours is all sample based oil changes with samples taken every 250Hrs, so we can closely monitor oil condition. We change the oil every 12 months unless required to prior.

Wow that's a big sump, 600 lts and you still had to change it every 250 hrs.

I have had excellent results using Shell oils over the past 30 years but the one experience below was very interesting.

We used to service a fleet of new trucks with 550hp C15 Caterpillar engines. Westrack allowed us to do warranty and service on the engines with strict instructions to only use genuine cat parts and engine oil. Caterpillar had a great system on engine service intervals. The engine oil change interval was based on fuel usage. when the engine computer reached 20,000 lts since last reset it brought up a message on the engine data tagging oil service. In this fleet most trucks travelled 28,000km. Some of the trucks that did more local work set off the warning at 21,000km so it was a very accurate way of determining the best service life of the oil. Of course we also has to do a oil sample every oil change and send it to Westrack. We would get an oil sample test report 48-72 hours later.

One of my mechanics mistakenly put Rimular X in one of these cat powered trucks instead of the genuine Caterpillar oil. I said don't waste 50 lts of oil and run it with the Rimular. The oil sample report come back and Westrack didn't say anything. On the next service the same mechanic decided he would put the Shell Rimular X in again and see how the oil stood up against the cat oil. We told the owner and he didn't have a problem of one truck being on the Shell oil, but we didn't tell Westrack. After the second oil sample test on this truck I got a call from the oil test lab. The Forman in charge of the test lab said what's going on with fleet number 4. I played ignorant and said I don't know why what's wrong. He said what oil are you using and I said the cat oil, he quickly said no your not. Again I said yeah it is. He said bull shit its defently not 15w40 cat oil. I said what's wrong with the oil. He said again they really needed to know what oil I was using in this truck. In the end I said ok sorry one of my mechanics accidently put shell Rimular X 15w40 in it. He then told me that we had made the same mistake twice in the same truck and was picked up in the oil trend reports by the computer in the lab.

I explained we were sorry and it wouldn't happen again. The phone went quiet then he come back and said, the Shell oil we were using out performed their Cat oil by considerable margins. I asked who Caterpillar used to supply oil to them but they wouldn't tell me. He also added that the Rimular X could have easily gone an extra 10-15,000 km than their cat oil. They asked if we would run the whole fleet on the Shell oil and do long term testing. We set the engine computers to 28,000 lts of fuel usage and the oil still out performed the Cat oil. Westrack were very surprised with the results over 18 months. Oil usage was also down and when we removed the rocker covers at 600,000 km for a valve set all the truck engines were spotless like they had only done 5,000 km.

We had Cummins m11 & n14 engines exceed 1,6 million kms and a Detroit 60 series exceed 2.1 million kms on this oil until it broke a piston top.

wbute if your Toyota engines are a 2L 3L or 5L I wouldn't go any further than 5,000km on an oil change, they are renowned for excessively slugging the oil.

And yes oil spinners are oils best friend, a fantastic invention that should be on every diesel engine.

[jason.ruff]

Only sample every 250hrs. Change as required, for engine with spinners its about every 2500hrs.

[Valencia]

All i know is we had big problems with Castrol in the 90s
Remember oils aint oils damm straight Castrol was and still is garbage

[Innuendo]

Friction Modifiers are plastics and accumulate if not flushed and replaced. That is why when you lift the valley cover/manifold or sump it can look like a dry muddy riverbed (cracked mud).
We used to call it the Castrol drought. Horrendous product and don't use Castrol to this day because of it.

Shell took over Pennzoil some time back and that is why we don't see Pennzoil in Australia like we once did.

[axistr]

I can remember when I was an apprentice removing the sumps from some cars and it looked like someone had thrown sulphur in them. The sump pan was yellow from all the sulphur and the bearing and rings look like they had been sand blasted. I have never used Castrol oils since. It ironic that Castrol GTX 2 was actually supplied to them by shell. Castrol GTX 2 was shells entry level oil (not a bad oil) but marketed by Castrol as a premium oil. I didn't find this out until 15 years later.

[wbute]

It's hard to know what's myth and what's fact. I remember everyone saying Castrol was no good. In the next breath they said Shell was no good as well.
We always used Mobil but only because that was the local fuel distributor. One Tractor we had did 8000 hours and we only rebuilt it because the liners got cavitation holes in them. Oil changed every 100 hours with Mobil 30 grade. Now Mobil has disappeared and I mostly use Gulf Western because the local heavy vehicle business uses and supplies it.
My John Deere Tractor is still under warranty and is using JD oil.
Westrac maintained all the gear at Cadia when I was there. They didn't seem to have too many engine issues. Very regular PM on the gear and the operators were kept in line. I did see one block out of a 793 dump truck (78 litre cat V12) that had hand grenaded from an over rev though.
It's interesting to read what people have found when they have pulled engines down though. Clearly not all oils are equal, just like filters and fuel.

[damienengland]

Now that i work for an electric car company i'm struggling to remember what oil is... ...but looking at this thread, the important stuff has been said. Oil sump volume vs good oil vs fuel burned vs oil sampling etc.

Sample chart method below for judging diesel oil change interval on distance traveled.

Oil change interval.JPG