Synthetic vs Standard (groan)

[RWEST]

Hi DP -

What kind of fleet? Light duty or heavy duty vehicles?

Our service/repair vehicles are a mishmash of gas powered small pickups (Ford/Mazda's) and Ford Focus's, with a minivan or two thrown in for good measure; the construction department primarily runs gas E-350 vans; we have 1 Freightliner FL-60 25,500# GVW and 2 Mits-Fuso 14,000# GVW diesel delivery trucks.

We'd been using, primarily, Castrol GTX in the gas vehicles, OCI's at 4K +/-, then decided last year to try M1 and go for 12K OCI's, with filter changes (Motorcraft, mainly, and Fram sometimes) at 4K. That's obviously a hit or miss way to go, but you know how corporate hierarchy ("we've never done it that way") can be. Anyway, we're now being dragged, kicking and screaming, into getting UOA's done, just to see what's what.

The delivery vehicles average maybe 25-30K miles per year - we have their oil/filter changed by the dealer (we're not really set up to garage big vehicles) - they get whatever 15-40 dino oil the guy uses.

The service/repair and construction vehicles average 40-50K per year (boy, are those high gas prices beating us up!! ); some vehicles get more miles, some less, depending on the particular service route. We normally get around 150-200K miles out of a vehicle, unless the PA road salt eats it away first. We usually add 3-4 new vehicles each year, with about the same number lost to attrition.

We try to use the oil recommended by the OEM, but, with a fairly wide range of years (2001 - 2008) and engines, we have to stock 5-20, 5-30, and 10-30, haven't seen anything needing 0W-XX, yet, so thank God Wally's is close by!!

Now, this is not to start things off in a whole new direction - just our observations, we HAVE noticed some greater usage (up to 1 qt/1000 mi) in a couple vehicles that were run with dino oil for 50-75,000 miles before switching over to M1. This in vehicles that had no excessive prior usage. But, the problem seems to go away after 5-10,000 miles or so. The seal conditioners and such must take a while to kick in?

 

[DieselPower]

Sounds like a good mixed fleet. Oil consumption after changing brands isn't all that uncommon so don't worry about it to much unless it doesn't stabalize over time. With the mixed vehicles and different viscosity's required for each you might actually be able to condense your oil inventory a bit. The vehicles you are currently running 10W/30 in would be fine on 5W/30 and would reduce your stock and the possibility of someone using the wrong oil in the wrong vehicle.

You might really give some consideration to doing your own in house services on your medium duty trucks. There's lot's of money to be saved by doing it yourself and with a properly implemented UOA program you could greatly increase your change intervals. Quite a few of my customers with FL-60's and 70's running 5.9L Cummins and 3126 Cat's are easily going 30K to 40K on drain intervals with many going further, all depends on how they are used.

One thing to keep in mind when going to extended drain intervals is to not forget the only thing you are extending is the oils service life and not the rest of the vehicle. Don't forget that you still need to perform a chassis lube, check tire pressure, top off all fluids, etc... as you normally would.

Something else to check into is different lube suppliers, not just the box stores. Some lube suppliers include UOA's for free if you use their products. At $20+ per UOA the free UOA's alone can be a real money saver over the life piece of equipment.

If you need any help getting your extended drain intervals and a service schedule worked out feel free to drop me a email or PM, I would be happy to help (it's what I do for a living, lube consultant).

 

[RWEST]

If you need any help getting your extended drain intervals and a service schedule worked out feel free to drop me a email or PM, I would be happy to help (it's what I do for a living, lube consultant).

Gimme a bit - I'm totally swamped right now.