High mileage oil worth it?

[Armandi]

I have a 98 SR5 V6 4WD with 135k miles. I was wondering what the opinions are on the "high mileage" oils like Castrol GTX or the Valvoline Max life. They appear to be synthetic blends. Any user experiences?

 

[074.0Runner]

Does your motor leak oil? Otherwise I dont use it.

 

[Armandi]

no leaks. :thumb3:

 

[MikesToy]

I have a 98 SR5 V6 4WD with 135k miles.

Sounds like low mileage to me. 135K mi/12yrs= 11250 mi/yr, 11250mi/12 mo= 937.5/mo, 937.5mi/30days= 31.25 mi per day

 

[CJ3Flyr]

I have a 98 SR5 V6 4WD with 135k miles. I was wondering what the opinions are on the "high mileage" oils like Castrol GTX or the Valvoline Max life. They appear to be synthetic blends. Any user experiences?

IMHO it's a good idea but maybe not quite yet for you. The big deal with High Mileage oils is they have a little extra additive to treat the rubber in seals. As seals age they dry and leak. All the high-mileage oils say for vehicles w/75k and higher. You won't hurt anything by using it and using it from 140k-150k up is probably a good idea.

Back in the stone-age we'd always add a touch of MMO (Marvel Mystery Oil) to the crankcase of old vehicles, tractors etc. for exactly the same reasons. It helps to clean sludge and softens the seals a bit. It seems to me the oil companies all decided there was some wisdom in that and basically packaged oil, premixed, with something similar to MMO.

The big advantage to the High Mileage formulations over adding MMO, IMHO, is that the viscosity will remain true. MMO is very thin. In the old tractors we wanted SAE 30 oil. In the car engines we wanted 10w-40. I'd put SAE40 in the tractors and 20w-50 in the car engines and about 1-1.5quarts of MMO hoping that my non-scientific dilution worked out to be about SAE30/10w-40. It seemed to work very well and over time minor leaks would stop or be reduced.