only days away from my 3500 service-any advice? i know there are a million posts on this, but its more people fighting over brands, not oils. it still has the factory oil in it, i havent done anything yet. i will go w mobil if synthetic, i live in charlotte nc if wheather plays a role.

 

I have only owned my G for a week now, so I'm no expert on this car.
My question would be why would you want to spend over $5/qt on Mobil 1, when you can buy regular oil for much less ? Especially if you are changing it at 3-4k intervals ? My opinion is that synthetic is not worth the extra cost.
I could see if you were going to leave it in for maybe 8-10k miles, but not for so few.
I'm sure others will suggest the synthetic, and that's fine with me.

 

dealer, yourself, or oil change chain?

 

Perhaps the biggest question here is how long do you plan on keeping your G35? If you're going to trade it in at or before 100K miles, then using dyno oil is just fine. If you plan on keeping your car for over 150K miles, you'll see sludge/wear benefits by switching to synthetic.

 

I cannot remember the exact reasons but somewhere on this site there was a pretty good discussion of synthetic in a new motor. It seems as if even the hard core proponents of synthetics still thought it better to use dyno oil for the first 10-15K miles. I believe it had something to do with the engine breaking in better with dyno oil. You should be able to easily find it with a search.

I plan on switching to synthetic at around 15k miles. I have always run Mobil 1 in my trucks and never had an engine problem. All of them had over 125k hard miles on them when I traded or sold.

 

the engine actually doens't fully break in until 15k and up..... i would throw synthetic after your 15k mile service

 

Changed out the crap 'dino' at 1,000 mi. and never looked back. Change my oil every 4,000 mi. with a Blackstone oil analysis (w/TBN) which is always flawless. Also, I never burn more than a few ounces between changes. Use K&N filters. I've run over 2,000,000 accumulated miles on syn. (owned a trucking company) and will never do anything else.

 

You could go check out www.bobistheoilguy.com and go into the forums for more than you ever wanted to know about oil, oil changes, etc.

I personally would probably do one change with regular oil and then switch to synthetic. I have always run Mobil 1, most of my cars get around 200K miles on them before I sell them, and I have never had an engine problem. Which is not to say I would have had I not used mobil 1. Just my experiance.

My normal MO is to change the oil at about 1K with dino, then change again at around 5K with synthetic and change it every 5-6K with syn for the rest of its life. I do a lot of highway driving, and I live in florida so it is a pretty easy life for the oil. On the other hand I frequently pull trailers on trips to the mountains.

 

I used dino oil for the 1st 15K, then used Mobil1.

 

You will get a lot of different answers! Each reply has its own merit! I recently switch to syn only because I got tired of changing oil and filter every 5-6K miles. So I go to syn so I can stretched it to 10-12K. Modern petro based oil are much better than years ago. New additives make them protect, clean, and last longer. Also if you live in cold/hot climate, you can get perhaps better protection from syn. The only real test is to have a fleet of cars using syn and another fleet using regular oil. After 100K, tear down the engine and examine the wear and tear. That's the true test. Everything else is really conjecture.

 

well, went to dealer and got regular oil. one meathead had no clue about oil and the other corrected him and said to switch to synthetic after this oil change (at 7000). ill decide then-btw, they listened when i said no car wash! but didnt hook me up w a new keychain when the ring was broken when i gave mine to them -thought that would of been a nice touch ( i asked agian and just got the ring w/o a logo). also, no floor mat paper. they asked to remember them on a survey too!-finally, being a luxury brand, a simple chocolate (sounds corny) or handshake would of been nice.....

 

I'll bet you that if you change your dyno oil every 3-4k miles, you'll be fine.

 

I just go with whatever the factory manual says. I just changed my oil again at 7500mi with Castrol GTX. Also, I don't think there is any proof that using dyno oil will cause sludge problems after 150K. Especially if you change your oil interval at 3K-4K miles and don't track the car. Oil change frequency is more important than the type of oil. Just my $0.02