Opinions on all of your questions are like noses, everyone has one.

Mine is this. Unless you know for a fact that your going to keep this truck more than 200,000 miles. Synthetic in the engine is a waste of money. As far as your tranny goes. Be sure your warranty will be in tact if you change to a fluiid not specifically cited as acceptable in you owners manual. Haven't looked, so I don't know if Synthetic is. Based on your posts about towing, 0 to 60 times and getting sideways, your very likely to need your tranny warranty.

Fuel filter. Won't hurt to change it now before it's cold out. Easier now than in the dead of winter. I change mine on a new motor at around 10K and then every 20K or so after that.

2 cents

 

If you read some of the past posts about synthetic oil most don't recomend switching until you have at least 10,000 miles on the engine to assure proper seating of the rings.

 

amsoil

 

My thought is to let the engine break in well before putting in synthetic, which prevents wear (also called 'break-in'...)

Since everyone says it takes 15 - 20,000 miles for these diesels to break in, I'd wait till then.

.02...

Rene

 

Hi
I use Esso 0-40 semi synthetic year round..I'm on my third cummins and as soon as this one is broken in I will be switching over agian...this oil pours at minus 30 and i dont see any useage in the summer months..I used 0-30 and saw some useage in the summer until the 0-40 came out..now its my oil of choice..available at any Esso bulk dealer for a good price

 

Vernl makes a good point. If it's REAL cold where you live in winter, such as Alberta, then Syn is the way to go. Remains pourable in the super cold weather.

 

D/C says run dino-oil til the 20,000 mi mark.-Steve

 

I swiched over to synthetic at 4200 miles, now have 6000. Did I screw up? Can I still switch back to dino? I think I was a baaad boy Abbot. :-

 

i run rotella synthetic, and change at 5000mi

 

[quote author=BLUE04 link=board=17;threadid=20878;start=0#msg195895 date=1065974152]
If you read some of the past posts about synthetic oil most don't recomend switching until you have at least 10,000 miles on the engine to assure proper seating of the rings.
[/quote]

But what harm would you do switching over before that?? The only thing that I can think of is that you would have higher oil consumption with the synthetic, which would probably be offset for the winter use, then in the spring/summer go back to a dino for the warmer weather.

If it were me, I'd do something like that. I'd probably use Amsoil 10w40 for the first winter see how it does, if it has significant consumption change back to dino for the summer, if no, either stick with the 10w40 or go up to the 15w40 AME for summer and then back to the 10w40 for winter.

 

Been using AMSOIL since 3500 miles and have NILL, ZERO, NADA, ZIP, 0, not even a little bit of oil consumption. Of course it's 10 months old now and has 19K miles on it and I treat it like Sh!!. Which is actually good for it ;D

 

I think the idea behind not using synthetic before break-in is that the synthetic greatly limits the amount of wear; break-in is the action of wearing-in mating parts so that they fit better & perform better.

If synthetic is put in, the break-in process essentially stops.

That's what I want, eventually - to stop wear.

But not before it's broken-in.

another .02..

Rene