If you are going to own a BMW this is a good idea - get rid of it after 100k miles. That way you won't run into reliability issues.

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Jim

Even now many have no real understanding of hod good synthetic oils are nor how they work .

There's no such thing as a car that doesn't need it because of age or sludge .

In fact, fully synthetic oils are incredibly detergent and will drive your old paraffin sludged up engine clean as a whistle .

You must be careful when switching some old engine to fully synthetic as the detergents WILL break all the sludge loose in short order and it can clog the oil intake screen causing oil starvation and engine failure .

I put fully synthetic oils in every engine I touch and the only one that failed, I neglected to to the critical, all important 100 mile hot oil and filter change before taking it on a long road trip .

Proper breakin takes 60 seconds of you o it right, few have the nerve .

I'm sure everyone here gets the "Oh, man I gotta get me a classic Mercedes / BMW !" when looking at your well loved car .

I tell them all to buy one of those lease return cars and run it until the first $2,000 repair, have it detailed and sell it on .

only die hards and D.I.Y.'er / Mechanics should bother owning older German cars .

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-Nate
1982 240D 408,XXX miles
Ignorance is the mother of suspicion and fear is the father

I did then what I knew how to do ~ now that I know better I do better

A lot of car mechanics try to talk customers out of synthetic oil. That's because they want their customers coming back every 3k miles for an oil change with oil that costs the mechanic maybe $0.50/quart.

A friend of mine had a 2000 Pontiac Firebird with a Buick 3.8 liter V6. Those engines were amazing, but ran really hot. Back in the early 1990's, GM switched those engines to 10W-30 conventional oil because they were sludging up on 5W-30 conventional oil. The better solution would have been to use 5W-30 synthetic, like they did in Corvettes and Cadillacs. But, GM figured out that too many Chevy, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Buick owners would say "I ain't gonna buy no car that needs $7/quart oil.

I warned my friend that he needed to use synthetic oil in his Pontiac. But, some car mechanic talked him out of it. The engine eventually failed because of sludge. Luckily, an engine flush got it running again. My friend was reallly lucky.

Back in the 1980's, another friend had a shop that sold and serviced mopeds. Mopeds didn't require a driver's license, or insurance. So, they were the vehicle of choice for those who were just barely getting by, and those who were staying below the radar. Those people would put a lot of miles on their mopeds, eventually wearing out the engines.

M friend's best customer was the city's drug kingpin. He'd had a fleet of mopeds ridden by childerns who'd move his drugs and cash around the city. He'd buy top-of-the-line mopeds a dozen at a time, and he'd wear out the engines. He was really appreciative of my friend turning him on to synthetic oil. With his engines lasting longer, he reduced his operating costs, and could pass some of those savings along to his customers... drug addicts.

Another early test of Mobil 1 was said to be in their pipeline unit trucks. Pipelines are long and to service them requires a lot of driving. I don't know what Mobil used for a standard during the early 70s but I do know Texaco would drive their trucks to a minimum of 250,000 miles before replacing them.

Anyway... It is safe to say that the majority of Mobil's trucks had some miles on them. When they tested them with Mobil 1 they leaked from every seal. The cause was tracked down to the very nature of Mobil 1 and why it worked so well as a lube.

The molecules of syn oil are tiny. The molecules of conventional oil are large. The gaps in the seals, such as the forward crank seal, due to normal wear would not allow the larger molecules of conventional oil to pass through. The tiny ones of syn would slide right on out of the gaps due to wear.

So the decisions was made to not run it in higher miles cars.

I think that over the years oils have been reformulated and this is why you see some oils marketed as 'higher mile engine oils'.

And.....

I don't buy a lot of new cars. When I do buy a car I usually buy a new one but I have the buying process so I don't buy one but about every ten years. The first oil change is done with Mobil 1 or an equivalent and every change after that is with a syn oil.

I have never had a problem with oil leaks or engine wear and I normally run my cars until they hit 300,000 miles.

Somebody might know more about this than I, but I have heard a few times that if your car is not run from the very beginning on synthetic, use of synthetic later in its life may not be cost-effective. The argument being that it will use more oil owing to less than optimal wear during its early life. The explanation I heard is that synthetic is more prone to leakage from wear.

I have no idea if that’s a factor in the behavior of my Chevy van - 5.0 L. It has 178K and lately smokes pretty badly briefly upon start up. I’ve been using synthetic for about a year. You can get a pretty good price on gallon containers from the well-known oil company Kirkland at Costco. I’ve been told that worn valve guides are likely the culprit. My mechanic buddy tells me I may as well just rebuild the heads if I’m going to try to tackle that.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Our average for new cars is 9.6 years and 119k miles. Both of our Hondas (10 years and104k miles, 12.5 years nf 147k miles) were leaning oil when we sold them.

Yes, synthetic oils weep, seep and leak more .

Because they stop the wear cycle pretty much dead they are well suited to keeping some old nail running forever .

Rich was looking at my 240D's engine bay sans engine and commented on how clean it was, I thought I'd done a poor job of keeping it clean .

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-Nate
1982 240D 408,XXX miles
Ignorance is the mother of suspicion and fear is the father

I did then what I knew how to do ~ now that I know better I do better

Just about to finish this one up. Waiting on a couple of hard molded plastic tubing pieces. Should have it back up and running on the BMW reman engine and two new turbos over next few days. This job takes a substantial number of manhours. I read somewhere where the dealer gets $14k for this job, parts/labor.

One other comment. I want to give a shout out to the engineer that came up with the design of the a/c belt arrangement in regards to how you install/tension it. Eliminates a mechanical tensioner while putting the proper tension on the belt. Google it if you are interested in seeing how it works.

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Jim

It's running, sounds good, started it briefly yesterday. I'll be glad to send this thing down the road.

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Jim

You mean the "ela" belt? - aka elastic belt?

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2012 BMW X5 (Beef + Granite suspension model)

1995 E300D - The original humming machine (consumed by Flood 2017)
2000 E320 - The evolution (consumed by flood 2017)

Yes, the elastic belt.

The only issue I'm having now is that there seems to be a leaky injector. I'm getting a check engine light fault code for the O2 sensor ahead of cat, bank 2 is responding slowly.

I swapped O2 sensors but no change in the code reading. Reading up on it it could be an exhaust leak or a leaky injector. Car runs and drives out smooth with no unusual noise so I'm thinking it is a leaky injector.

I put the injectors in the same cylinders they were in on the old engine thinking that I would not have to do any "coding" of the injectors but I may be wrong. I've got to do some more reading. Any guidance/tips on determining which injector is leaking? Like I said, I'll start reading up on what to do to troubleshoot it some more.

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Jim

I'm finally able to send this one home. I've been struggling with a "slow upstream O2 sensor response" for a while trying to resolve it and FINALLY found I had them installed backward - upstream was downstream and downstream was upstream. Computer saw a rock steady number. All this time I had been telling myself I did not remove the downstream sensors and then looking through some pics on the phone today noticed I had removed all of them. Swapped them and car runs like new.

Glad to get this one out of the shop.

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Jim

Good job Jim!

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[SIGPIC] Diesel loving autocrossing grandpa Architect. 08 Dodge 3/4 ton with Cummins & six speed; I have had about 35 benzes. I have a 39 Studebaker Coupe Express pickup in which I have had installed a 617 turbo and a five speed manual.[SIGPIC]

..I also have a 427 Cobra replica with an aluminum chassis.

Don't you just love it when a simple thing fixes some persistent problem ? .

I'm slowly working my way through re jetting a carby on an emissions controlled (California spec.) 1984 Honda Moto ~ it's been kicking my butt for a long time now, I fin ally got my son the racer to listen to it and he said "make the pilot jet larger" and Lo ! it now is close to done .

__________________
-Nate
1982 240D 408,XXX miles
Ignorance is the mother of suspicion and fear is the father

I did then what I knew how to do ~ now that I know better I do better