Swapped to synthetic oil in my 97 F-150 and now it leaks from everywhere

I tried synthetic after 250k miles on conventional because the bottle said better protection, but now I got puddles under every seal and I'm wondering if the old sludge was actually holding it together or if I just got a bad batch of oil, has anyone else had this happen with a high-mileage engine?

3 comments

3 Comments

parkera2219d ago

You said "the old sludge was actually holding it together" and I think that's exactly backwards. That sludge wasn't a feature, it was a problem. Your seals were already failing from decades of deposits building up and hardening, and the synthetic just flushed all that crud out faster than the worn rubber could handle. I've seen high-mileage engines go 300k on conventional with no leaks as long as you change it every 3k miles. Synthetic is thinner and flows better, so it finds every weak spot a 250k-mile seal already had. You didn't get a bad batch, you just exposed what was already there.

hugoh5519d ago

And it's the same with people who blame their doctor for finding something wrong instead of the disease that's been hiding there for years.

patriciareed19d ago

Whoa, that really makes me think about how we do this in other areas of life too. Like, people always blame the new thing when it reveals old problems, but the new thing is just being honest about what was already broken. It's like when you finally clean out a messy closet and things start falling apart because the old clutter was the only thing keeping them upright. Or when a doctor runs tests and finds something bad, people get mad at the test instead of the disease. We always want to shoot the messenger instead of dealing with the real issue that was festering underneath.