Motor oil is motor oil

[FordDude]

Wife and daughter are driving to Utah on Wednesday. They are going to spend turkey day with Uncle Scott, wife's brother. My nephew is going to South Korea for a year. Kunsan AFB. So he will be there before deployment overseas. So time to change the oil in the F150, 2002 extended cab 5.4. Have always used Valvoline conventional 5-20W. Cannot find it, OK I found one quart. Wallymart, autozoned out and NAPA. Nope, at least not in 5-20W. So Valvoline synthetic blend it will be. Full synthetic in the Edge and Durablend in the 07 Mustang. Did not know that I had to plan ahead to buy oil. I do not know how much longer we will have the F150, I would like to sell at or before 200k, 166k on the odometer now. But like the 07 Mustang, it does not get driven that much. Right not we both have company vehicles.

fd

 

[KBMWRS]

And your question is?

 

[GypsyR]

I was in a later model truck (Dodge I think) the other day looking at OBD codes and one of them was the truck complaining "incorrect engine oil used". My first thought was that kind of puts the kibosh on those folks bound and determined to put stuff like Rotella in everything. When the vehicle itself is telling you what you put in it is wrong that seems kind of hard to argue with.
My next thoughts were: what oil is supposed to be in it, what was put in it, and how the hell does it know? I wasn't in a position to ask any such questions or get answers anyway.

Just popped in my head after FordDude's post for some reason and I felt the urge to ramble.

 

[Kelly_H]

Don't think you have to plan ahead to get oil... it's just that wanting 5W-20, which is used by modern cars, in conventional instead of synthetic, which is more preferred for older vehicles, is a bit of an oddball oil to want.

Myself, I use synthetic in both my cars. The 02 Escape gets Mobil1 5W-20, the '66 Mustang gets Mobil1 15W-50 (a special blend with a lot of zddp for flat tappet motors)... both get changed at ~7500 miles. Dunno, neither of them have exploded or had a meltdown yet.

 

[Horseplay]

I was in a later model truck (Dodge I think) the other day looking at OBD codes and one of them was the truck complaining "incorrect engine oil used". My first thought was that kind of puts the kibosh on those folks bound and determined to put stuff like Rotella in everything. When the vehicle itself is telling you what you put in it is wrong that seems kind of hard to argue with.
My next thoughts were: what oil is supposed to be in it, what was put in it, and how the hell does it know? I wasn't in a position to ask any such questions or get answers anyway.

Just popped in my head after FordDude's post for some reason and I felt the urge to ramble.

This one caught my attention as I wanted to know how it "knew". From what I found on the Web it is almost certainly oil pressure related. Failing sending unit being the most likely culprit. Seems it happens a lot when people first switch to synthetic as well. As I'm sure you noted, it shows up if reading codes but doesn't necessarily cause a light to show on the dash, depending on root cause of code. Apparently the same viscosity of synthetic yields a bit less oil pressure than the dino juice. Increased lubricity maybe? Another rabbit hole of research likely awaits me.