Purchased my first Ford last night...F-150 King Ranch. I've always used synthetic oil in my vehicles, but not being familiar with Ford engines, any thoughts on using synthetic oil in my 5.4L?

 

Im not sure what everyone says about it now, but the main opinion on it used to be wait until after your first oil change to switch to synthetic.

But there is nothing wrong with synthetic in these engines.
Personally I just use with Motorcraft 5w20, but thats mainly because synthetic is a little out of my price range.

 

Congrats on the new King Ranch Tumbleweed58 and welcome to the forum

There’s a boatload of oil threads already on this forum with various opinion’s

Personally I use Motorcraft 5W 20 and I change oil & filter every 3,000 miles

 

What jpdadeo said. Do a Search with synthetic oil as the search criteria. You should have enough opinions and reading for several months. It has been a hot topic many times.

Congrats on the King Ranch. They are awesome! Welcome to the forum.

 

You'll have no issues what so ever using a synthetic. Older vehicles with iron rings would have problems because the synthetic is such a good lubricant the ring wouldn't seat properly during breakin. This caused people to get a bad taste in their mouth about synthetics. If you feel better simply switch to a Syn. after your first change. I use full syn in all my vehicles including my 00 F150 5.4. A regular oil change schedule every 2500-3000 on normal oils will also work beautifully.

 

Even the Amsoil website says that a break-in period with dyno oil is benificial. After that, syth is fine. I've been using dyno and changing my oil and filter every 5k. Anything less than that is needless. I'm looking into changing over to synth because I tow very close to my tow rating, but I'm still checking on the change interval. Amsoil says 12.5k for their filter and 18k for the oil. I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with that.

 

I use Motorcraft 5W 20 and I change oil & filter every 3,000 miles by the way
what color is the King Ranch? I have had mine for about a month and enjoy every minute behind the wheel.

 

Thanks all for the info! I think I'll wait until 10k miles before switching to the synthetic (like I've done on all my vehicles in the past). I usually change the oil and filter every 7,500 - 10,000 miles with the synthetic.
02KR: Mine is the copper with AZ beige - pics coming soon!

 

I've always used syn.Motorcraft 5 w 30 in my 4 F150's i've owned and also my Mustang Bullitt with no problems at all.

 

That's a syn-blend, isn't it? I've always used Castrol synthetic, any thoughts?

 

After lots of back and forth decision making(I had used Valvoline with great success in my Silverado), I went with the recommended 5-20 Motorcraft. Decided that I did not want to have any questions should a warranty issue develope. Ended up letting my dealer change it and it turned out to be quite a bit cheaper than the Fast Lube I had been using, $29.00 compared to $42.00. I change about ever 3000 to 3500 but think I will stretch it to 4000 now. Have 7300 miles on the truck and it does not move on the stick at 3000 miles.

 

Five years and 133,000 miles later, here's a brief update: After the initial 10k miles on dyno oil, I switched to Castrol Syntec 5-20w oil. I chose the Castrol oil because of its low ash, high zinc content, and higher boiling point. I have changed oil (and filter) every 10k miles since with no problems at all. Well, except for my recent TPS trouble code; I'm still working on that! Hope this was helpful!

 

Wow, great report. Thanks for taking the time to retrieve and update this thread with your results. This is a great example of how well a 10k oil change interval with synthetic works. So your driving 26,000 miles a year, which is an oil change 2.6 times a year, roughly every 4.5 months. Have you considered doing oil analysis? That would be interesting!