Mattgical

do you notice a difference when using synthetic oil vs. regular oil?

other than the higher cost, what type do you use and what benefits did you see?

i have a 93 integra and was thinking of treating myself to the Cristal of oil by using synthetic. Did you use the full synthetic or the mixed kind?

but i dont want to literally pour my money down the drain if there isnt an added benefit.

SiClone

Skip the synthetic on your 93. It's not gonna do squat for you and could cause some leaks....

thx247

use the full stuff. Mobil 1 for example is a very good oil.

Differences? Cold starts are awesome now, so smooth. Engine operates smoothly after any type of driving where sometimes other normal oils seemed to not be doing their job.

Vtec engagement is smoother especially when your low on oil.


Why not try it out once and see if you like it.

All that stuff about leaking imo is silly. Unless your using a cleaner type oil, nothing should change.

Psychosis

In an older car, its not worth switching ( > 125k or so).
If you are going to do the switch, its a good idea to use a can of motor flush first; valvoline makes a good one, Gunk is cheap, but not that great. This will ensure you get all the crap out of the engine before the changeover. However, if some of that crap happens to be plugging a little leak, you may be in for a rude surprise

mickey513

:thumbup:

Yup, skipped it. Won't benefit your car at that age and especially if you have a lot of miles. Best recommendation if you want something better for your car is the high-mileage oil, like Vavoline Max-life, Castrol, Pennzoil.

crash

i use synthetic on my 95.
remember-once you use synthetic,you can NOT go back.

bottlenose

Thats not true

fizzbob7

you can swap synthetic to regular oil every oil change if you wanted....synthetic's best quality, to me, is that it won't burn as easily as regular oil....if you have a turbo (most of them), then it will help extend the life of it by not allowing the oil to cake up on the bearings as easily.....it will cause some turbos to make a lot of odd sounding noise...i don't use it on regular engines...waste of money.....driving habits and maintenance make more of a difference...$4-$5 a quart for it is a little crazy.....if you feel like it's gonna make a difference, then you will feel that difference...do what you want....turbo, yes...NA, no....

bottlenose

my engine almost got screwed from switching from mineral oil to synthetic. check this out... 0-40k miles it was using mineral, after that i switched to synthetic and i noticed small leaks from head gasket and way down in bottom end by oil pan, this is common, well turns out that the synthetic oil broke lose some build up of mineral oil which again is normal, but it got stuck in one of my oil lines and caused the oil pressure to drop to zero. luckily, engine is fine and i got to the problem before it would have caused severe damage. I now use mineral oil.

fizzbob7

i've seen that happen too.....1 out of 100 incidents.....nothing to worry about....i've done it a bunch of times....ran synthetic in a 760turbo volvo for a while, then noticed the turbo sounded amplified....after a few oil changes, we swapped back to regular oil and it was fine....got another 70K miles out of it.....but from your story, swapping from regular to synthetic caused problems, but you said that syn to reg was bad.....it's just a possibility that's it's bad for anything.....not at all likely...but do what you want.....