[curtis73]

Its never too late to use a higher quality oil. The leakage issues you sometimes hear about might show up on your car. Engines which use cork, paper, and fiber gaskets tend to crack and dry over the years. The cracks fill up with gunk and don't leak very much, they just sorta seep. Switching to synthetic with its higher solubility can clean out that junk and reveal some pretty hefty leaks and/or oil consumption and burning. The good news is that if you switch and start getting leaking or smoking, you can always switch back to regular, use a couple applications of a stop-leak stuff, and you should be back where you started.

There is no issue with switching oils as far as the engine is concerned. Its the same oil molecule, just that one is created in a lab and one comes from dead dinosaurs. The ones created in the lab don't have any of the refinement impurities which makes them "better."