Well today was the day! I made the plunge on Friday to go to wally world and look for motor-oil, and 5w-20 was onsale with Pennzoil Platinum. I got the Motorcraft recomended oil-filter from the stealership. My question is why on earth did they mount it against the frame and horizontally. It makes much more sense to mount it vertically so you can fill it with a quart before you put it on, but w/e. I will never bring my truck back to the stealership to change the oil, the definately over-tightened the filter by a long shot...it was hard to get off with one of those vice-grip rubber gripper things. It whent great though, started up fine...and has ran perfectly so-far. I will update if anythign goes wrong!
~Phil

 

i have been thinking about making the switch also. But im worried about the cleaning abilitys of synthetics. Let me know if you have any new leaks or anything. Mine hase 170,000 on her and thats what im worried about.

 

Thats one thing they say about synthetic is that it wont create leaks, but it will worsen existing leaks.

 

I was a little hesitant myself...but so-far I am very happy with it. I am making a 1k drive to Oklahoma from Virginia (and 1k back) in a week...so I guess that will be the ultimate test waiting to see how that turns out...and if I will be calling AAA like "DANGIT!" I am hoping that that won't happen, and it shouldn't, my TAC whose house I am staying at and helped me change my oil has been running full synthetic in his 2500 8.1 ltr vortec for the last 20k miles and has had no problems (we tow a 4 horse goosneck with it) but the engine does use a quart on long uphill hauls...I didn't say leak, or anything it doesn't burn it is just has so much strain on it with 16k lbs.
~Phil

 

Those 8.1's are something else arnt they? I have used one many times to pull 25 round bales on the high way! Quite the gas engine... LOL Lots of nads.. I still prefer a PS over them though. And jsut to throw it out there we als ohad a 89 460 and a 97 460. Tehy both pulled the same load. Just not quite as fast. The 97 460 was just a hair out of reach of the 8.1... The 89 couldn't touch it. It was carberated though

 

GM 8.1's do burn some oil by nature - and suck a LOT of gas.

 

That they do.

 

this weekend advance auto parts in town was running a special on full synthetic valvoline, 1 quarts buy one get one free.. so u know what me and my friend did. we cleaned out both stores bought all of their 5w 30 and 10w30. lol so ive got oil for 2 more oil changes. and my friends got 2 cars hes now got enough oil for about 5 oil changes since his only takes 4 quarts.

 

Did you also see the $8.88 sale on Mobil 1 oil filters?