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The last time i had my Ka serviced, when the oil was changed a good quality shell 5w40 mineral oil was put in (less than 3000 miles ago). This year with my next service looming i want to start using a fully synthetic oil (0w40)in the car and was wondering if it could go straight in without doing any harm. cheers for any help
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Hi Smoke,
I am not sure about the Ka, but, according to your Ford book, does it specify a 5w/30 oil (same as Fiesta 1250cc), if so, Halfords do a reasonably priced own brand oil. This will suffice for your needs, going to fully synth is a bit of overkill on this type of engine (personal view).
Pastyman...
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Definately 'overkill', epecially if your car's got high mileage and/or is pre-late-2002 pushrod-engined vehicle, in which case it may simply be 'kill' :-)
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a semi synthetic _ eg Comma- would be ok - but full synthetic is unneccessary: hardly hi tech or hi output:-)
madf
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hey hey, thanks for the advice, the car is a 13'000mile (mostly motorway as i use it quite sparingly when i need to go any major distance) 2001 ka, which i have owned from 10mths old and 15 miles :) so not high milage at all . I was wondering about the 0w40 since i can get 5 l for about 20 quid (costco), and so the difference between this and something from halfords is negligable. Why would the 0w40 damage a pushrod engine, from what i understood, the 0w40 was only thinner than 5w40 at starting temperatures (when the engine is cold) and has very little difference in viscosity when the engine is hot as compared to a 5w40 semi synth. The only damage i thought would occur was on a high milage engine, which this most definately is not.
cheers for comments
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as mentioned here,. you can switch to a 0w40 fully synthetic but to be honest its not going to give you any advantage over using a 5w30 semi
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Don't do it. I'm no expert on oils but I think that if you switch an old engine (the design of the engine if not the actual age of your engine) to synthetic you could be asking for trouble. My personal experience of doing this is that I started to get oil leaks where previously there were none. A prompt switch back to the thicker semi-synthetic stopped this....
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Just buy the Ford 5W/30 oil recommended by Ford from a Ford dealer. It's cheaper than the Costco oil you mention.
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Assuming this Ka is fitted with the older pushrod 1.3 lump................. have the spark plugs been removed since new?
If not, I would say you'd be wise to try to remove them as they are notorious on that particular engine for basically welding themselves into the engine block.
A few mins spent removing and lubricating them at 30k may well pay off in the future.
There are other threads about this;
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=11605&...7
PP
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Your handbook says Formula E from Ford-usually at about £10 for 4.5 l. at your dealer.It's 5w/30 semi-synth.and is well overspecced for this engine which would run for ever on Ford 10w/30 or 20w/50 as long as it has regular oil/filter changes.
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