Best oil (non synthetic) for my 83 turbo b21ft?

If your oil seals are not leaky, you could do an engine flush and switch to synthetic with not too much trouble. The main problem I know of with switching to synthetic on a "high mileage" engine is that old seals may start to leak more if they've been relying on sludge to hold in the oil. The synthetic will clean out a lot of the sludge that's built up inside the engine. I think this is a big reason why oil consumption increases right after switching to synthetic, as the junk gets burned off.

If you stay with petroleum oil, don't use grades with wide variations like 20W-50, which will really gum up under high heat. If you wanted to do some research, you could find out things like the flash point for hot performance and pour point for cold performance.

OT: im in portland to and i also have a 83 turbo
now on topic, when i did my last oil change i went to oil can henrys and they said that 20w-50 is the factory sugested oil, is there a better all around good oil that i should be using? im looking for a weight, not necessarly a brand
TIA

CF

coldfusion21 said:

now on topic, when i did my last oil change i went to oil can henrys and they said that 20w-50 is the factory sugested oil, is there a better all around good oil that i should be using? im looking for a weight, not necessarly a brand
TIA

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You might use a 20W-50 in a very hot climate, or if you were racing and would be building up a lot of heat.

In Oregon, 10W-30 should work just fine if the engine is in good shape.

As suggested above, main things are 1. Use name brand oils 2. Change regularly 3-5k miles (or less if you choose). I use 20-50 in the summer on high mileage cars and would use 10-30 in a cold climate. Mixing oils is not a big deal. Synthetic does tend to clean the sludge out a bit which can cause leaks to appear.
http://theoildrop.server101.com/cgi/ultimatebb.cgi
Here is a good site for oil q's

To my .02$ in on this. I changed my turbo over to Mobil 1 at 165k miles. The oil consumption dropped by half. Now with 291k miles no sign of wearing out. The motor does have some issues but none are with oil pressure. When I replaced the head gasket at 275k miles. The cylinder honing still looked great with no wear ridge at the tops of the cylinders. Amazing stuff that synthetic. I bought my car with 120k miles and used Kendall GT1 until changing over to synthetic. I don't think the Kendall GT1 oil is rated for turbo use nowadays.

I've used the Valvoline blend and Valvoline racing and I was happy with their oil products, too.

Best regards,