As a Porsche owner every dollar counts which leads me to my next question about oil. For the past 4 years that I have owned my 944 Turbo's they have only seen Mobil 1 Synthetic blend oil which cost about $4-5 bux a court. Recently finding out that Synthetic oil wasn’t even around back when my car was built is making me re-think about putting overpriced synthetic oil in it. How many others run dino oil in their cars? I would like to switch to Castrol GTX 20W-50 oil. Would this be a good oil to run in the summer? Any concerns you may have about my decision please post.

Thanks

 

There's a big oil thread in here somewhere from the past few days ... search for that. It has lots of info.

Personally, I just rebuilt the engine and am facing the same decision. I think I'm going to go with Dino. As my mechanic who trained in Germany said ... "when the car was made, there was no synthetic".

I need to do some more reading on the pros and cons first.

 

Stefan, could not find the "oil thread". Can you paste it in a reply so we can check it out?
Thanks,

 

Dan, one thing to remember when your car was made it was not making 300 + HP like now, so why not give your car the best protection available today.

I will break my car in with dino, then switch to synthetic Amsoil or Redline not sure which yet.

Dino will do the job, but as good as synthetic ??

<img src="graemlins/burnout.gif" border="0" alt="[burnout]" /> <img src="graemlins/burnout.gif" border="0" alt="[burnout]" />

 

[quote]As my mechanic who trained in Germany said ... "when the car was made, there was no synthetic".
QB]<hr></blockquote>

I'm not sure I believe that... My 86 Shelby GLHS was made the same year as my 86 951 I'm assuming and my 86 shelby came factory filled with mobil 1 5w-30.




Funny, I also found this plaque under the hood too?

 

Omniphil - What's the point of doing a burnout with front wheel-drive?

 

What, front wheel drive cars can't do burnouts? If you run race tires, you heat them up and get better traction, same as rear wheel drive

 

[quote]Originally posted by Dan87951:
<strong>...Recently finding out that Synthetic oil wasn’t even around back when my car was built is making me re-think about putting overpriced synthetic oil in it. How many others run dino oil in their cars? I would like to switch to Castrol GTX 20W-50 oil. Would this be a good oil to run in the summer? Any concerns you may have about my decision please post...

Thanks</strong><hr></blockquote>

At the risk of sounding harsh, there is a serious flaw in that logic. Why not take advantage of technological inovations that can better protect your engine. Porsche continuosly makes technological improvements to their engines to taking advantage of current technology. Porsche in fact recommends all new Porsche should use Mobil 1 oil.

I'm not sure what was available back in '87, but I do know that synthetic oil has been scientifically proven to be vastly superior to dino oil in terms of thermal breakdown, cleaning abilitiy, etc. Considering the mods you have, you are pushing the engine much harder (read hotter) than a stock motor which makes the roll of oil that much more important and the life of oil that much harder. Also using the "it didn't exist logic" would mean you would have to ditch all of your mods since they sure as heck didn't exist in '87. Believe me, I know its a bite to spend all of that cash on oil (My wife recently found a $90 receipt for 3 cases of Mobil 1 for my 951 and 325is and flipped), but these engines cost too much, and are too much fun to run hard, to risk running an inferior oil for the sake of saving a couple of bucks.

 

Take a look at these articles and you'll switch to synthetics... and not all synthetics are the same either!

<a href="http://www.pelicanparts.com/techarticles/mult_gas_and_oil/mult_synthetic_faq.htm" target="_blank">http://www.pelicanparts.com/techarticles/mult_gas_and_oil/mult_synthetic_faq.htm</a>
and this <a href="http://www.pelicanparts.com/techarticles/mult_gas_and_oil/mult_oil_article.htm" target="_blank">http://www.pelicanparts.com/techarticles/mult_gas_and_oil/mult_oil_article.htm</a>
for more info - these are some of the best I have ever read on sythetic oils.

 

The 911 Forum has a 'Switch to Synthetic' thread that you guys should read. Here's what Bill Gregory posted in there :

"The current Porsche recommendation (June 2001) on oils for use in all 4,6, and 8 cylinder Porsche engines since 1973 is:
Castrol/Syntec......................... 5W-50
Mobil 1................................ 0W-40, 5W-40
Sun Oil/Sunoco Synturo Gold............ 5W-40
Texaco/Havoline Formula 3 Synthetic.... 5W-40
Valvoline/High Performance Synthetic... 5W-30

Viscosities recommended for the Turbo are 0W-40, 5W-40 and 5W-50. The nW-30 weight oils are approved to 85 degrees F. Greater than 85 degrees F should use nW-40 and above. Alan Caldwell (PCA Technical expert on 1989 and earlier 911's) has noted that conversion to synthetics in 1978 and later engines should not cause any undo problems.

I switched to Mobil 1 15W-50 in my 81SC at a bit over 100K miles, and didn't have any leakage or other problems with it."

Omniphill ... looks like your 86 Shelby has the same info as my 86 951. I also checked my user manual out of curiousity and although they didn't recommend synthetic, they did acknowledge the existance of it. What I also found interesting, is that they recomended regular Dyno oil changes at 12,000 km or 1 yr intervals! Seems kind of infrequent to me????

Anyways, My new engine has burned in it's first 5,000km so I've tried Mobil 1 0W-40 this time. $60cdn just for the oil, but I shouldn't need it changed for a while. Apparently the new P-cars recommend about a 24,000km interval! So far, with the synth the engine seems a bit smoother on idel, but I still get the noisy valves for a few seconds on startup.

Ciao