when the ford dealer changes your oil if you have it done there,
is the 5w20 motorcraft oil they put in a blended oil=syn/petrolium
combo or is it straight up petrolium?

 

Combo

 

Unless you specifically ask for something other than regular oil, you will get a regular crude oil. At a dealer, they get oil deliveries that fill a huge tank, and the oil is neumatically dispensed into your truck from guns that are usually inbetween every other bay. The brand of oil you get is whatever gets delivered into the tank. At our dealer, we used to get 5w30 Valvoline oil. That's what every car got for an oil change, unless the customer wanted a different weight, then we used the Motorcraft quarts off the shelf. Keep in mind that Ford doesn't make thier own oil, Motorcraft oil is and brand name oil in a motorcraft container.

If you are not comfortable with getting your oil this way, just ask them to use the Motorcraft quarts. It gets charged out the same on the repair order, so it shouldn't be any problem.

 

another thing to watch with the motorcraft 5w20 oil is that when the 2001's first came out motorcraft 5w20 came in a black container and was the crude version. now it comes in a red container and is the synthetic blend, and i can't find the black, crude anymore. they may sell only the blend now???? anyone know for sure???---Jim

 

Doesn't Ford get their oil from Castrol now?

They are the only ones who list specifically the Ford lubrication specifications, and are the only ones (at least here) that offer the 5w-20 weight oil (non-synthetic).

Just wondering.

 

can you buy the blended motorcraft somewhere?

 

Around here it can be found at Wal Mart and Autozone for sure. That's the 5w-20 synthetic blend in the red bottle.

 

Walmart carries it - believe it is 1.77 per qt? They also stock the motorcraft oil filters

john

 

the facts of the matter are that you are going to get whatever the dealership happens to have in stock.

not all dealerships are the same, and ford doesn't tell them what oil to use (or rather how to dispense it).

for example, the dealership where I work uses bulk oil, but when ford started making the switch to 5-20, we needed a new seperate container and pump etc to dispense 5-20 bulk oil.

so for quite some time 5-20 was dispensed from the parts department in special 5 quart containers (looks like jug of antifreeze). Thats great until you run into a vehicle like a pickup truck (lightning) or cobra etc that takes more than 5 quarts of oil. In these instances, 5-20 was not yet available in single quart bottles, so we were instructed to add one quart of 5-20 synthetic blend. This oil was considered interchangeable.

this is fine untill there was a shortage of the 5 quart jugs and quite a few vehicles got a 5 or 6 quart fill of the single bottles of synthetic blend.

so like I said it really depends on the dealership and what is available.

we now have 5-20 bulk oil in use, but I'd dare say that some dealers are still using bottles (which is generally considered better, but more expensive for the dealer than bulk).

also I'd venture to say that there quite a few vehicles running around that have the old 10-30 where they should have 5-20, think about it, how could you tell?

sorry so long,

later,
chris