My car is an 05 WRX with appr. 1200 miles on it. When should I switch to Mobil 1 0W-40 Full syn?

 

I switched on my 3rd oil change at 3500 miles.

I ran Mobil 1 5W-30 but then switched to 10W-30.

 

I waited till 6,000 miles before I went with Moblie 1 5-30

 

Thanks for the input guys!!

 

yah if you dont want your rings to seat properly start off using full syn. but if you want to break in your engine properly i wouldnt recomend it till atleast 10k

 

3k went to full synthetic. No problemo.

 

i waited till after 10,000 to switch to synthetic. 5w-30

 

Me too, I don't use any perceptible amount of oil between changes.

 

I waited till 10K myself here is my oil analysis after 30K

http://www.scoobymods.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4718

Which only goes to show that waiting won't hurt.

 

I don't think waiting is going to hurt the car, but I don't think changing to synthetic at 3000 miles will either. Several cars come from the factory with synthetic oil, my 99 Viper GTS/ACR did, don't know if the new ones do.

 

I switched to syn earlier than most recomend (around 1200 miles)...but I don't get any oil consumption over 3k miles and my mileage is the same as everyone else's is so I don't see what the big deal is. Also, like illy said, many cars are coming with syn these days. And Mobil1 says you don't need to wait (of course), and Subaru doesn't say anything about waiting in the manual...just to use the right weight and quality oil.

 

I just put in redline 5w-30 two days ago at 1175 miles on my 05 wrx. Ring seat is misunderstood, rings seat almost immediatly, they kind of pop into the place that they are going to ride for the rest of the engines life. What takes some time is to wear off the initial machining from the inside of the cylinder walls. Synthetic can be too slick(too good of a lubricant) to allow this process to happen. When I drained the original oil out it was so nasty and broken down that when I put some between my fingers, I think water would have been a better lubricant, there was just nothing slick about it, pretty nasty if you ask me. If a car comes from the factory with synthetic, than it has been broken in already, correctly I might add. This does not mean go hammer on the car from day one, the gears still need to break in. I will switch all my gear oil to synthetic at 5k miles.

 

A lot of cars come from the factory with "break-in oil" in the engine. My '03 WRX did, too. Break-in oil is much thinner in feel than even 5W-30. It wasn't all broken down and nasty, it was break-in oil. I dumped mine at 1k and put in conventional 5W-30.

My previous car, a '90 Eclipse GS Turbo was run 260K miles before I sold it, and it was running good then. I used only Castrol GTX in that car too. Needless to say, I'm not motivated to buy synthetic.