1985 300DT
the temperatures here are staying over 0F....highs around 15F.
I just drove the car up from Mississippi. It has been driving on Castrol GTX 20W50.
What oil would be recommended?
Can I get away with using a Purolator Oil Filter? Or should I return it and get a different one?
Please help. This is my first time!
Thanks.

jay,
Welcome to the forum. You will find a wealth of great information here. One of the "hot" topics is oil. If you use the "search" feature to search the Diesel discussion, I guess you would find, oh, I don't know, maybe 500 pages of "oil" recommendations, and counter recoomendations. But since you'vs already started this thread, just sit back. It'll grow to 100 posts by Monday.
Anyway, Its good you found the site. Check out the archives.

If you include your location and vehicle information in your signature, it will help to get specific data to you.

Enjoy the site!

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

With those temps, you'd do well to run a 5W-40 synthetic until temps warm up.

Where are you?

__________________
2009 VW TDI Jetta Sportwagon 172k miles (rear-ended harder than Elton John on 8/4/13. Total loss)

1991 Volvo 240 142k miles (T-boned by a stop sign runner. Total loss)

Amsoil is literally the first in Synthetic motor oils. Which was first developed for jet engines, back in the 1960's.

Other motor oils have slogans. Like they are the best, ect.

But amsoil, is the only oil, backed up by laboratory facts and test.

And its the only oil company, that has the balls to back up thier oil for 25,000 miles or one year.

Combined with thier EA oil filters, Which is made from Nano-fibers which trap up to 5 micron.

Compared to 25 micron with conventional oil filters. Which are made of cellulose, which is cotton.

The hot oils eventually break down the cellulose fibers, and seriously degrade the filtering process.

The synthetic nano fibers, not only catch smaller particles. They also flow faster and last a lot longer.


Instead of changing every 3,000 miles. You wont have to, for 25,000


Conventional petroleum based motor oils are dirty. They come from the ground, and are a mixed soup of chemicals. Only like one or two of the chemicals are actually lubricants. The rest actually cause damage to the engine.

Also Synthetic motor oils are the same consistincy at any temperature. At negative 70 degrees the oil still flows like it is supposed to.

But the petroleum based one, has waxed up, pretty much frozen.

Imagine the damage, the engine would have to go through before the oil was warm enough to actually lubricate agian.

Synthetic motor oils are also reign supreme in high temperatures.

At high tempertures, typical in internal combustable engines, petroleum based oils, boil.

The oil evaporates, thickens, and turns into tar.

While Amsoil, synthetic motor oils are barely affected by high heat.



Anyways, google it up yourself!! and tell me what you think

www.amsoil.com


peace

"With those temps, you'd do well to run a 5W-40 synthetic until temps warm up." like the man says, run a thinner oil if the temps are staying low. As for the puralator, ive used them in my car with no problems. Just make sure the o-ring on the oil-filter housing doesnt leak

__________________
82' 300SD

Looks like we have an Amsoil dealer.

__________________
'81 MB 300SD, '82 MB 300D Turbo (sold/RIP), '04 Lincoln Town Car Ultimate

Sooner or later every car falls apart, ours does it later!
-German Narrator in a MB Promotion Film about the then brand new W123.

Amsoil gets their base synthetic oil from Mobil and adds their own additives. Not really worth the premium over Mobil Delvac 1. The only thing I buy from them is the EaBP90 by-pass filter (And that does not even keep the oil from turning black).

Well at least now I know what oil to buy the moment my 240d errupts into jet like performance. If only the hills were steeper around here. I am really starting to get tired of this refined turtle oil I use. I also cannot justify a thin fast flowing oil for that engine. It would have no place to go.

No dealer, I just get a free 20% discount for being a veteran.

Im just regurgitating things I have seen on the internet.

Not to mention most high end, high performance cars only use synthetic oils, and its recommended for all other cars.

I've just started using it.

And I love the cold starts, with no assistance needed, at around 10 degrees fahrenheit. Which never happened with my regular motor oil.

I'll post up unassisted starts at other temps, if it gets colder over here.

But I also have a little fuel right, fuel oil conditioner in there. Which is supposed to get rid of sludge. protect from rust and clean the fuel system.

Not sure if it works. But sludge and water shoots out of the tail pipe at start up, kinda like diesel purge, but more!! Which i think is kinda cool. And just like diesel purge I have noticed increased power and lower idle noise.

Amsoil also seems to increase power, and make the engine more quieter. Not sure why, but hey, it works.

BTW i didn't know Amsoil gets thier base from Mobil.

I wonder what the actual wear tests are. Since they are all from the companies, and should be biased.

anyways, LAters!!

With Amsoil, 25,000 mile oil changes. You can't be serious. Has anyone tried this? It would be great if it worked, and all I had to do was change the oil filter.

jeff 1991 300d, 101k

Two of the by-products of combustion are soot and water.

__________________
2009 VW TDI Jetta Sportwagon 172k miles (rear-ended harder than Elton John on 8/4/13. Total loss)

1991 Volvo 240 142k miles (T-boned by a stop sign runner. Total loss)

When I was working at the wal-mart oil change place many ages ago, one person came through that was running 30,000 on his oil in a Dodge Neon with only filter changes every 5,000.

5w40 synthetic, be it Delvac 1, Rotella T, Amsoil, Castrol whatever.

On the old 616/617 you can't go much past 5k miles before soot loading becomes an issue. At 7k-9k the lab's start to red flag the samples.

With the newer diesels 602/3/6 you can go 8k-12k.

Note if you want to extend drain intervails to the max, make sure to use a group 4 synthetic, like Mobil, or Amsoil. Not the group 3's like Rotella T.

__________________
1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

Until Amsoil buys or builds a polyalphaolefin (PAO) unit (ain't gonna happen), they will have to buy theirs from someone else.

They also buy their additives from the same folks that the other oil formulators do.

Amsoil puts out some good oils, but they are not magic. And their chemists are not somehow smarter than the chemists at Mobil et al.

What Amsoil has working for it, also happens to work against it for many folks. That is their lack of API registration for most of their oils.

Not going for API registration means they are not saddled by the additive level restrictions imposed by the API. They can load up on catalytic converter killing phosphorus and not worry about losing their little emblem on the bottle.

Many folks will not use a non-certified oil, no matter what the manufacturer says about it, so the market for Amsoil will always be smaller if they continue to by-pass the API.

As for the 25,000 mile drains, few non-commercial vehicles should ever run that long on any oil without considerable make-up. I've seen folks try it, and they generally are not pleased with the results. And don't try it without oil analysis along the way (which will end up killing the economic benefit of the longer drains, by the way).


Tim

__________________
2009 VW TDI Jetta Sportwagon 172k miles (rear-ended harder than Elton John on 8/4/13. Total loss)

1991 Volvo 240 142k miles (T-boned by a stop sign runner. Total loss)

He essentially changed the oil once during the 30k with the filter changes and top-offs.

I wonder what his oil analysis would have looked like?

I know a gal who once went 15,000 on a Prelude with dino. Ruined the engine.

__________________
2009 VW TDI Jetta Sportwagon 172k miles (rear-ended harder than Elton John on 8/4/13. Total loss)

1991 Volvo 240 142k miles (T-boned by a stop sign runner. Total loss)