I went to change the oil for the first time in my land Rover Discovery 2 just purchase two days ago. My Land Rover Dealer said do not use synthetic in my discovery because the type of engine I have would leak much more because of the viscosity of the synthetic oil. Basically stick with regular oil. What do you guys use in your DII? Any LR service guys out there who agree/disagree with this?

 

i would stay away from synthetic but thats me.

rotella t is becoming widley used in the rover world. ive used it for a long time and its great oil!

rotella does make synthetic stuff but I'd stick with the dino oil

 

I use synthetic as do a lot of us. It has nothing to do with viscosity your dealer just does not want to deal with your whining if you have consumption or leaking. Synthetics (well real synthetics) generally are better at cleaning and synthetic oils are generally better additized with cleaning additives. That cleaning can cause temporary consumption or leaking. If you ever crack open your engine I will bet you wished you used a better cleaning oil. I know my engine was pretty filthy with regular conventional oil changes.

With the overheating problems these engines have I think you would be crazy NOT to synthetics but that is just me. With the sales these days I get my synthetic oil cheaper than conventional. Also realize not all oils are created equal. Whatever you use you should use a HDEO like rotella or delvac whether conventional or synthetic is up to you. Personally I use mobil 1 5w40 TDT or Rotella 5w40 TDT but also have some rotella semi syn 10w30 in the stash which may be an excellent choice if you are afraid of full synthetics. You can use 10w30 all year round.

 

Your engine will hold up a lot longer by running a good synthetic oil and good filter. Yes, there is a slight chance you might see a small oil seep because of it, but it would have started leaking anyway at some point.
I use only a Mobil 1-301 or a K&N 3001 oil filter with Mobil 1. I run a 5W/30 in the winter because of our cold starts and a 10W/40 in the summer, some will go to a 20W/50 in the summer, I used to when I still lived in California.
Either way, with Dino juice, change the oil every 3000 miles, every 5000 miles with a synthetic.
Now on to 2 other D2 issues for you to be looking at, front drive shafts and bad factory plug wires. If your front drive shaft only has one grease fitting, you must get it rebuilt or replaces with 3 servicable U-joints and a new centering ball or it will fail and take out your tranny. If you still have the grey factory plug wires, they will need to be replaced, sooner or later, with 8 mm wires to maintain your engines performance, and always use 91 plus octane gas.

 

Your dealer is full of it.

http://www.mobiloil.com/USA-English/...ics/Myths.aspx

I use Shell Rotella, its cheap and just as good as Mobil 1.

 

i think there is a thread somewhere that compares oils side by side......rotella is meant for heavy duty use in diesel motors and has certain proprieties that a synthetic wont give you(zinc)(phosphorus)... not bashing synthetics Ive used both. i just think most synthetics are over marketed.

discomike uses mobile one so it cant be to bad. its really just a preference i guess. one benefit with the synthetic is if you live in extreme cold it will help with cold starts...

 

I think you are over simplifying things to say the least. So what about synthetic synthetic heavy duty engine oils like Rotella T6 5w40? What about Rotella semi synthetic? Also there is the mobil 1 TDT 5w40 and 15w50 those are both HDEOs. Then there are amsoil synthetics oils designed for 25,000 OCI's and redline synthetics that are ester based and even more highly additized than the over the counter HDEOs. And so on and so forth. To say that a conventional HDEO does things that synthetics cannot do is silly. Yes the conventional HDEOs are good but the synthetic HDEOs are even better. Now is someone in charlotte doing 3000 miles OCIs going to see the benefits? Maybe not, unless they own a discovery that overheats and they benefit from that extra thermal stability.

 

Bottom line, pick a oil that you can readily get when you need it, one that you can afford and one that makes your truck happy.
My truck does not like Pennzoil but she LOVES the Rotella.

It's all relative, as long as you go no longer than 5,000 miles between oil changes and use a decent oil filter your engine will last as long as you want it to, or not, engines have been known to blow up well before the 100,000 mile mark as well as go well over 300,000 miles.
It's all a crap shoot.

 

I had a tick that went away after switching to Royal purple...sure it started leaking and did so for a few months but that stopped and my it runs a lot better

 

So if synthetics are good for extreme cold temps what would be good for extreme heat? I'm in vegas and have about maybe 2 1/2 more months of 100-90 weather.