To late to switch to synthetic?

[Walkercraig01]

2004 yukon has 206k on it. Last oil change it burned about half a quart however it was 8k miles . I got the diff oils checked and trans and they arr pretty burned up so will be changing all of them soon. My question is ...dO I hav too many miles to switch over and spend the extra money ?

 

[iLikeEggs]

There's a few different schools of thought about that. The advertising hype would say to go synthetic no matter what the mileage. There's way more marketing than science behind all of these motor oils.
Then there's the crowd that says if it got that far on regular oil then stick with it. Truth about regular oil these days is that it's way better than it was a decade ago. No doubt about that. If it is changed at steady intervals it should be more than adequate and tolerate more abuse than the non-syn oil from way back when. Most of what you will see on the shelf today for synthetic is a blend. Sythetic oil is made partially from recycled oil as it is. It's all pretty darned good stuff.
If you want to spend the money on synthetic I would. I went with Mobil 1 at 125k on a (probably) highly abused, duty driven cop Tahoe.
Anything over 100k I have an expectation of sudden failure for any drive train component. That being said, why not try to get the most out of it and go with the better synthetic? For the tranny I plan on going with Royal Purple. The guys on here rave about it.
As always, your mileage may vary.

 

[Walkercraig01]

That's why I asked so many people have different opinions. It runs great still and has no signs of slowing that being said. I want to keep it that way

 

[iLikeEggs]

I would say that at this point you could stay the same or change it. Check the compression in all the cylinders. If any are are way off you may want to hold off until you decide if you want to rebuild or replace at this point. If compression is good and reasonably even between all cylinders and you hav no other mechanical worries go to synthetic. Try to go for 300k. If you decide to rebuild or replace I would use non-synthetic for the break in period.
It seems that you have a solid runner there though!

 

[HoS]

Stick to manufactures recommendation.

 

[VICDBOSS]

I'd switch to a high milage semi synthetic blend. Castrol is what I started using after mine got up to 100k miles. I now have 250k miles.
Burning a half a quart is not bad at all.


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[southboundchicken]

I agree that burning half a quart in 8 k miles is awesome

 

[jerryjoe28]

this is kind of an odd answer because before this summer I was a huge "nothing but syn. in every thing I own" guy. however this summer my old man gave me his old work car. a 89 civic with 200k+ on it. the thing had been garaged from day one and regular maintenance always done. he only uses cast GTX. I know this sounds crazy but the little crap box looks BRAND NEW. and runs like a top. when I brought it home I decided to do a tune up and swap it to syn. about 1100 miles later it started making a ticking noise and by 2k miles it was knocking. now im sure the syn. is not what caused the noise but maybe it cleaned just enough junk out of it to make it happen. should have just put the stuff that was always in it and im sure it would still be just as quiet as it ever was....... with that being said my advice would be to use the oil its allways had in it and change it more often!

 

[SLCHOE]

8K miles between oil changes?

Frequency is more important for longevity than the whole dino vs syn debbate. Even if you used 99 cent sore oil but changed it at every 2000 miles you'd be better off than going almost 300% overdue for an oil change. Change your oil often. That is the key. Castrol Hi mileage is great oil and the next best thing to Edge which is their full syn. I advise all of my customers to switch over to hi-mileage when at about 90K miles. The syn in the blend helps the seals not leak.

I change my oil every 2000 miles full Castrol Syn Gold. It costs me nothing and my commute is 5-7 miles one way so I do it way more often than most people could afford.

 

[Walkercraig01]

Yea we had our lincolns wheel beari g or hub go out and was driving yukon everyday to work it's 30 one way . So it racked up quick. I also had a 300 mile one way to pick up my daughter which was twice in one week. SO a quick 1200 miles. No excuse. But Def more miles than usual. We are in the process of buying the wife a 2015 hyundai sonata 2.0t and if we get it the yukon will be hybernating a while which is awesome.