I just purchased my first Porsche. It's an 87' 930. I own a 72' beetle as well and was told to never run synthetic oil if I don't want leaks so I never did. Is it the same for a porsche The previous owner of the porsche was using Castrol GTX 20-50 and swears by it. Would it be wrong to switch to synthetic or what I was thinking is a semi- synthetic or even mixing a 1/2 synthetic with regular oil. What do you think? The car has 65000km on it if that matters. Any advice from experiences would be nice to save me the trouble of doing the wrong thing.

 

Well, your old bug probably wouldn't have liked synthetic due to the old seals, gaskets, etc. There's lots of discussion about this type of thing on 356talk (356 Registry's listserv). The consensus there seems to be that if you do a complete rebuild, or if it has been rebuilt in the past 10 years or so using then-new gaskets, etc. synthetic would be fine as long as that is all you ever put in it - no mixing!

I'd imaging your new Turbo would be just fine with synthetic, as long as you weren't just "topping it off". Have a full change done at a good shop, and you'll probably be OK.

Note - I'm not a mechanic, I just tend to remember everything I read (especially about 356s )

 

Generally with Porsche, engines after 1979 will be fine with synthetic oil. Porsche started using it exclusively around 1993. All Porsche recommended oils today are synthetic, too (list is on 911 and 964 forums)

 

Great, thanks. I'm just worried about oil leaks I never had coming about after changing to synthetic. As of now there are no leaks and I want the protection of full synthetic. The car has 65k on it so it should be broke in good by now

 

Do a search, there has been much discussion about dino vs. synthetic. It seems that if you have a leak, it will become more pronounced with synthetic. Although synthetic will not cause the leak.