Ok my 5.4L gets 80 miles a day, 6 days a week and runs all day haul'n boats from my shop to the ramp. After about 2000 miles on an oil change (5w-20 motorcraft syn) its a qt low. My co-worker had the same issue with his 5.3L Silverado so he switched to 15w-40 and has for months with no prob and oil holds level. What ya'll think a bout swithch'n my 5.4L Good or Bad?

 

Bad idea. Let the Chebby guy ruin his stuff. Todays engines hav such tight tolerances that running a weight difference that high just kills them. your truck eats a quart in 2k doing heavy duty work. Big deal. Consider it a snack for it. By the way 15w-40 is diesel oil.

 

You didn't say how many miles are on your truck. My 2000 5.4 burned a qt about every 2500 miles until about 80k miles and then quit. I ran Mobil 1 5w30 from 10k on and changed it every 5k. It takes a long time to seat the rings in these long lasting Ford Trucks.

My son has a 2004 GT Mustang. He put 4.10 gears, headers and flowmaster exhaust on it shortly after buying it with 33k miles on it. It used a qt about every 2500 miles until about 65k miles and quit.

 

I'd call it normal. Oil will burn, and under conditions you mentioned, its logical for it to do such a thing. Worry about it when its eating more than that, and starts smoking. Then you have a problem. I ran Mobil 5W-30 for the longest time. About the time i'd need a change 2500K-3000K, I lost about 3/4 of a quart roughly. I put 10W-30 in, and I didnt lose as much but I still lost some. I usually just do fords recommended weight. Truck seems to like it better to start with.

 

111,000 on the truck and 15w-40 is most commonly used as a diesel oil for the hard working motors we use it in everything from 8.1l volvo penta to 90hp yamaha and all merc, pcm and suzuki's in the middle

 

Stay with the 5-20. Your engine is normal.

 

If you don't want to use 5w20 any more, you can change to 5w30. The Triton really needs a 5w something for proper startup lubrication.

 

stay with what your using... that much oil in that many miles doing what your doing there is nothing wrong with that bud!

 

Yep! Completely Normal. Your not burning it, your using it. - Big difference!

Using oil WILL happen - SPECIALLY when pulling.

_____________________

HP = Bi-product of torque. HP is equated from torque #'s. The trick is keeping peek torque #'s down low where they should be. Certain mods can hurt this without the correct tuning and hardware.

The 5four is factory tuned for the stock set up. To improve the stock set up = Canned tunes will do it. You get specific tunes = 3 of them, for specific applications. That will help. BUT, no matter what you do - The 5four likes it's fuel. It's a heavy truck and needs petrol to perform.

The 5four engine will convert fuel to awesome performance when configured properly.

It will give you excellent economy when set up and driven properly as well. An economy tune is one of the 3 you get in a Canned package. You just have to drive her civilized like. That can be hard to do. Their allot of fun!

 

I'll give ya a suggestion to try. If you have Pennzoil or Havoline 5w-20 in your area, try that and see if the issue goes away. Here's the issue, the Tritons use a low tension ring on the pistons. Yours may be allowing the oil to get past rings because of the high content of GP III base in Motorcraft, Kendall, and Trop Artic oils ( they are the same base formulation). The Pennzoil and Havoline don't have as much GP III and may solve the problem. If it doesn't solve the problem at 2000 miles, drop a qt of oil out of the pan and put a qt of Royal Purple on top of it and run it another 1000 miles with this mix. The PAO base of the RP has more solvency and might clean up any stuck ring packs. Or you could run a dose of Auto-Rx thru it to clean it up and solve any stuck rings you might have. Because of the low tension rings, the Tritons are prone to use small amounts of oil at higher mileages from stuck ring packs. Cleaning the ring packs up will improve low fuel mileage and can make a noticeable difference in power. It won't add power, just restore what's been lost over the last 100,000 miles from carbon, sludge,varnish, etc
http://www.auto-rx.com/pages/applications.htm

While I'll tell you that Auto-Rx is a great engine cleaner, that's all it is. Don't read anything into the advertising hype on their web page. It's a great cleaner that won't damage the engine like most solvent based quick flushes.

 

Thanks ya'll

 

yeah i use castrol 5-30 high mileage i have 110,000 miles on my 2000 5.4 and it uses about a quart in between changes.