I have bought my mother in laws 93 Sc1. The car is practically in mint condition. Less than 40,000 miles. She put about 1500 miles on it a year!!! That's it. She got the oil changed every 6 months!!! The oil has never been black at all. I'm not sure if I should keep using the regular 5w20 , the synthetic blend or full synthetic.............Thoughts???

 

I like Mobil1 Full Synthetic in my cars. Been running it for years and doing my oil changes every 10-15,000 miles. I also use a Mobil1 filter. If I can't find one of those, I use a Wix or Purolator Gold series filter. I DO NOT use Fram, simply for personal reasons.

 

I would continue to use whatever has been used in the car since new. It is great that the oil was changed by time on such a low use car. Your car should give you many years of service. Now to look at all the hoses and other fluids especially the brake fluid.

 

Although the single cam S car engines or historically not big oil burners, 91 through 92 , pretty much all sohc and dohc S car engines where oil burning nightmares including my 92 SL2 that was burning 2 quarts for 3000 miles at 42 k. When I traded it in on the 97 SC2 still in my driveway. 93 was the first year that things under the hood began to stabilize. And that is in retrospect.

I don't remember the recommended oil ever being 5w 20. I have heard that from two or three posters about earlier s cars but until I see a Saturn S car oil cap stamped 5w 20 or a picture I will continue to believe it was always 5w 30. If it was 5 w24 91 and 92, that demonstrates a huge part of the reason why they burned so much oil.

If the recommendation was still 5w 20 in 93, you are stacking the deck against yourself. If you want that engine to last a good long while and not develop oil burning issues, run 10 w 30 full synthetic and 5w 30 in the winter if you have to.

This has been proven by many many in the Saturn community to be an effective strategy for avoiding oil burning issues or at the very least delaying them significantly.