DYI vs "quick-lube" chains

For economic reasons I've gone back to changing my own oil. It's getting to be around $30.00 a pop. I use Castrol GTX oil and they use Quaker State. I've used Castrol in the past and I think it is a superior conventional oil.

I don't know, but I was wondering if the type of oil, and oil filters these quick-lube places are using are contributing, in part, to all these premature engine failures on the 3.1L

Just a thought.....

Well I usually do it my self also, However the past few changes I have had to take it somewhere due to leaving town and not having time. I always specify that I want Castrol. As far as the filter goes, I imagine that they use the cheapest thing they can find.

I use generic oil 1.00 a quart in my vehicles and have driven then over 200K. As long as the oil meets the government standard it’s good enough for me. Yes, other oils are better but IMHO they are the same if changed regularly. The difference would be evident if I ran the same oil for about 6000-7000 miles. I change mine every 4000 highway miles approx. 3 months.

Just make sure that you read the back of the bottle of oil. I have seen some cheap oils that say on the back of the bottle not intended for use in motor vehicles after 1991! Sometimes you get what you pay for.

I've worked in a few oil change places - believe it or not, almost all of them use Penzoil (yuk)...on the filter side, they almost all use a Fram manufactured filter (even if it doesn't say Fram).

I personally use Napa gold oil filters and Napa Synthetic oil - costs me less than $15 an oil change and the Synthetic does make a difference in running temp and smoothes out some of the engine noise, especially at idle.

do it yourself, most quicky-lubes don't do half what they say, and most use recycled oil. Many of the filters they use don't have the check valves a quality filter does, and nowadays most cars have ungreasable chassis parts, so you're paying for a service that you aren't getting.

I've yet to see any that use recycled oil or sub-standard oil filters...years ago that may have been the case but I think too many of them had lawsuits against them so they started using quality stuff.

I have heard that once you start using conventional oil, you shouldn't switch to synthetic and vise versa. Is this true?

I always heard this too...at one time, you weren't supposed to "run in" a new engine with synthetic either because it was too slippery. Now they have new cars straight off the assembly line with synthetic in them. I talked to a friend of mine who sells several manufacturers of oil and he said generally, it's ok to switch from conventional to synthetic at any time just as long as you don't switch back...the flip-flop between the two can cause problems. However, if your car came with synthetic from the factory, they do not recommend switching to conventional.

I have been running conventional since I have owned it. I was thinking about going to synthetic or synthetic blend. Is this not a good idea?

I would venture to guess it would depend on mileage...after your motor has worked for so long on conventional, it would probably do more harm than good to swith to synthetic.

I am about to turn 53,000