Oil Options
 

Hello all.

Time for me to do an oil change again. I've always used Castrol High Mileage 10w 30 in all my saturns. They perform well with it and run quiet and smooth. But I'm thinking about swapping it up this time to see if I can reduce oil burn a little bit.

What do you guys use? Any suggestions on brand and weight?

Castrol is good -- but switch to 10/40

Thanks. I will surely try that!

I use MOBIL-1 5-30 or 10-30 when it's on the shelf.

I don't use synthetic in my S car. It's never had it and have no reason to switch, or I guess non to either switch or not. It is in the triple digits here now. I would not use 5W anything unless it was 5 degrees or less outside.
And here in the desert, it ain't even close. I use 20W50 dinosaur oil mostly due to the high heat here. if it was 70 instead of 107 I would use 10w30 or 10W40 In my Chrysler purchased new in 2007 and now has 100,000 miles on it I use Mobile 1 15w50. As far as what brand dinosaur oil? I have my preferences but I really don't think it makes any differences. I have a couple of 5 quart jugs of Peak and one or two of Valvoline

For my Saturn, I am partial to 10w30, that what I have used in it since new and don't see a reason to switch. As for brand, my preference has been the brand known as "On Sale". If nothing is on sale, then it is what ever is cheapest. I also use the cheapest oil filter available as well, used to be Supertech from Walmart but they have been discontinued. Now I usually use the basic Puralator filter, though at the moment I have a Fram because it was free with the purchase of 5 qts of oil.

At 256k, it does burn a little oil, or lose it somehow. I go through about a quart every 1500 miles. My son, who is at that age where his car has to have the best of everything, uses a synthetic oil in his. When he does an oil change, which is way too often in my opinion, but its his car, I take his used oil and drain it through a screen back into the bottles and I use it for makeup oil between oil changes on my Saturn. The oil he uses is advertised to be good for 15k miles and he has only used up 4-5k of those, so his used oil is plenty good for makeup oil in the Saturn. In fact it is probably still good when I drain it from the Saturn.

I go by the oil change monitor for my oil change interval, which usually runs about 5500-6000 miles.

That is an interesting approach, and 10W30 oil is a weight that generally was a factory recommended weight of oil that gave good engine reliability over and expected life span.

But what engine Oil Change Monitor? Inquiring minds would like to know.

The now factory recommended 5w20 motor oil, and oil weight generally assumed to be one used during the winter and one used only when the temperature ranges were regularly round 5 degrees and rarely over 20 degrees is probably the single biggest contributor to low engine life reported by so many people. Not only Saturns but about any make and model that exists. While it is a recommendation based on predicted fuel mileage, any increase in economy is probably not measurable nor cost effective.