Re: Oil Synthetic or Not? Gas - What Octane? With or Without Ethanol?

Posted by Owen_Dyneto On 2009/3/5 9:27:59

.....using synthetic is a waste of money.

John, many of us drive our Packards less than 1000 miles a year with many cold starts and shorter trips. Best practice for this type of use is to change the oil annually regardless of whether you've got a few more or a few less miles than that. So if you do that, you're wasting a primary benefit of synthetic oil which is prolonged oil change intervals, thus for those circumstances I agree with what your mechanic said.

I also think for those of us that experience a winter season where the cars are idle, the best oil change time is when the cars are laid up, thus they winter with fresh oil free of condensation, acids, etc. that accumulated during the driving season.

I'll just add my support to the prior recommendation on gasoline; with the exception of the 1954 359 motor and the 374 V8s, anything over 87 octane is not required and offers no benefit.

PS - and if the original poster can tell us where to buy fuel without ethanol (other than an airport) I'd like to know.