What brand oil and filter do you use?

I'm gonna change the oil this week before I take a trip up north. I'm gonna use a Motorcraft filter and Valvoline 5w-30.
 
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Well, I've just done the first oil change on this truck, since I got it a few months ago.
Took advantage of a "special" they were having at NAPA and used some 10W-30 Valvoline this time, with somethiing that appears to be a version of what NAPA used to call their "silver" filters.
So far so good.
In years past I've used all kinds of oil. Never had a problem with any of them, really.
I did notice a difference with ARCO Graphite and Synthetic is a whole different ballgame.
With my old truck, I settled on Delo 400 15W-40, because it shut the lifters up (self-destructive oil pump).
Now, the "truck oils" don't have as much zinc in them (Grrrr! EPA!!!), so they don't do quite as good of a job of doing that as they used to.
Next time, I'll probably go with Castrol or maybe Penzoil. Those are old favourites of mine...depends on what the special is that day. =)
With filters, I found out a long time ago that most of the filters out there are made by Wix.
They're a good, solid filter that do the job. NAPA filters are Wix and are at a good price point. Don't see any reason to change.
I could probably go into a big long thing about how often to change, but I've typed enough already (and you people aren't idiots, right?).
For many years, I went with 6K o&f changes and everything worked pretty good, but then one day I was talking to my father (who was a diesel mechanic himself) and he noticed that last 1-2K miles, the engine suddenly needed oil fairly often.
I had never noticed that until he mentioned it, but he was right.
Since then, I typically change o&F at 4k miles. That's right on that threshold of the oil getting worn out.
...of course, I temper that interval depending on the size of the filter.
Most cars today take a very small filter. When I have to deal with that, I often use a little kentucky windage and assess the size of the motor to the size of the filter and adjust my intervals thusly.
My last truck took a very small filter, for the size of the engine, so I changed the filter about every 2K, but kept the oil changes to 4K.
When I found a longer filter for that engine (double length), I changed that practice to oil and filter every 4k.
With the Ranger, the filter seems to be big enough, so I'll both O&F at 4K.



Dean
 
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