Switching Oil Brands

[Uh-Oh]

I haven't had my blazer all that long, and have only done one oil change on it since I got it.

When I bought it, there were still some old stickers in the upper left hand corner of the window from old oil changes. It appeared as though it had been taken to a place that used Pennzoil all the time, since the stickers all said it had been changed with Pennzoil 10w-30, it was pretty obvious.

I've never been much of a fan of Pennzoil, no reason for it really, just never used it.

In my last vehicle I used strictly Valvoline in it. It's all that I ever used, and I never had a knock or rattle come from the inside workings of the engine. It had head gasket problems, and I had to change them a couple times, and both times the engine was clean as could be around the top of the heads, and around the cam under the intake. Even when I sold the car with 162,000 miles on it, you could take the oil cap off and look down on the rockers and they still looked clean.

Since I used valvoline for so long I almost don't feel right putting Pennzoil in it. I've always heard though that a person shouldn't switch oil brands. If everyone believes Pennzoil is great I would continue with it, its just that I have had such good experiences with Valvoline (more than the one listed above, it just had more miles than others) that I would like to switch over and use it.

What are everyone's opinion on switching oil?

[JParrott]

http://theoildrop.server101.com/cgi/ultimatebb.cgi?

The place above has more oil nuts than you can imagine. If those guys can't come up with something to help you, it ain't happening.

I myself run 5W-30 Valvoline Durablend with PureOne filters. I see no problem in switching if you so choose. I'm getting ready to go off of the syn blends though and go back to straight dino (Castrol GTX) I haven't decided if I'll use the high mileage blend or not, but if any crazy crap happens I'll post it. I'm also leaving PureOne as I now have valvetrain noise that I didn't have with other filters. I've never had problems with Pennzoil, but there's a whole buttload of people who HATE it for it's tendency to gum up sooner at higher temps.

Check out that BBS I linked. You'll get way more educated opinions there than you will here.

[BlazerLT]

Use 5w30 in a Blazer, not 10w30.

The 5w30 will warm up faster and you will have slightly better fuel economy.

Just don't use Fram oil filters.