Oil changes

[Birdseye]

oil quality does not equal viscosity. stick with the manufacturers designation on viscosity since he knows what viscosity will ensure an adequate flow of oil through each bearing. incidentally, 20W 50 effectively means the viscosity of a 20 grade when cold and of a 50 grade when hot, 50 being thicker than 20

from what both yanmar and castrol have said to me, i would also suggest you stick to the api CD, CF etc that they specify. surprisingly, you can add too good an oil, according to the oil manufacturers. only discovered this after i carefully looked after a yanmar engine, giving it the best oil i could find. result was polished bores basically because the modern car diesel oils are formulated for bores that are plated and much harder than the normal cast iron of a yanmar, and some of the super performance additives degenerate into mildly abrasive compounds. these polish the cast iron, but they dont do so to the plated bores. or so i was told, and i dont think they were conning me since they didnt know what each other had said.

so, if its an old type engine stick to old type oils. you can kill with kindness.

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[Guest]

hiya jimi
wont do any harm to the engine, only to your wallet. go by the usaeage in hrs except when faced with extremes.
start engine, leave a few seconds on tickover so that the oil reaches all parts and then set at a brisk tickover 1500 revs till engine reaches operating temperature, i actually run mine like this to charge the batteries every day im on it, why wear your gearbox out by putting it in gear?, if you are like me and the binlids use lots of juice the actual charging of the batteries consumes a couple of HP and no loading is required, i am sure that the bullshit about bore glazing and not running your engine harks back to the days of raw water cooling and the thermostat settings at 60 deg C, that was a comprimise to stop the cast iron being eaten away by hot seawater and is not an issue nowadays with modern intercooled (ie fresh water cooling thru a heat exchanger)
the engines didnt run hot enough to prevent gumming up of rings and a myth was born.

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[JeremyF]

Jim


Are you using Volvo oil, or Halford standard diesel oil?

Are you changing the filter every oil change as well?

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[jimi]

I've got a Yanmar3GM and I'm using Halford oil, I changed the oil filter after my first "oil flush" but have'nt changed it since, I was only going to change the filter once a year. Seriously every 6 weeks is probably overstating it, I did a couple of very quick oil changes to try and get rid of the sludge etc and am intending to pursue a policy, now that the oil is clean, of changing every 3 months. £6 a time or an extra £18 a year does'nt seem to me to be a high price to pay for a significant reduction in engine wear.

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[Heckler]

if cost is not a significant factor why not? would seriously cosider changing the oil filter again. all that nice clean oil with nice unused detergent in it might just start cleaning out some of the oil passages and crannies.
stu

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[saturn]

change your oil and filter every 250 hrs running or once per year if less,thats good enough for my diesel generators and they run at all different oil temps,loads and duty cycles and a lot of them 25 year old, most oils come from the same bulk supplier so buy the cheapest as long as it meets the engine spec.i use a cheap halfords in my citroen diesel and manage 33000 miles per year.well thats mho.

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