I change my oil myself on all my cars & Mororcycles too, about every 5K to 7.5k miles depending on my eyeball evaluation of the oil on the dip stick. Full synthetic every time (Gave up on Dino oil about 10 yrs ago). I refuse to pay for high $ (royal purple or Ames). Stick to Valvoline, Quaker State, Penz, etc. I have also used Super Tech (wallmart brand) without any problems ever. I have never had it analyzed though, never felt the need to.That's an old iteration of the 2.0 Ecoboost, it has been updated extensively since and latest iteration has been reliable (if made in Spain like the Maverick 2.0 is). This is my third 2.0 Ecoboost and even while people were blowing up their old Focus ST 2.0 motors mine ran very strong on factory everything up until I sold it with about 150k on it. These motors NEED fresh, high quality synthetic oil and clean factory spec coolant. Follow the factory maintenance intervals if you want to pay for a new motor or test the validity of your extended warranty. Did I mention that in the fine print of many extended warranties they can and will replace your blown motor with a used junkyard motor?
Also, on the Maverick version of the Ecoboost they no longer cut the trench between the cylinders since that was a known failure point for the headgasket.
Lastly, look at the carbon buildup in the piston rings. This is again from a combination of poor maintenance and low quality oil. I get a lot of grief from people for basing my oil changes on used oil analyses but it seems to be working for me and changing oil more frequently especially since I do it myself is so much cheaper than replacing an engine. Every once in a while I send my used oil out for analysis to Blackstone Labs and when it comes back I'm almost never happy with the viscosity specs and the flash point of the oil, both of which are degraded because of fuel dilution. It's just an inherent repercussion of direct injection and nothing you can do will mitigate it, not even a catchcan. If you use an inferior oil no catch can will save your engine because cylinder temps for a DI turbo motor can approach 400 degrees. Guess what? You have oil on your cylinder walls to lubricate the pistons. If you have a low flash point that oil on the wall and in your piston rings is going to burn and cause carbon buildup and no amount of fuel injection/system type cleaners will help those rings once they are stuck from carbon buildup. Sometimes I get my used oil analysis back from blackstone it'll have a flashpoint in the range of 260 degrees yet they will say "We think you can run this oil for at least 3,000 more miles" and I want to tell them, thanks Scientists but no thanks. Take what blackstone labs says with a grain of salt and use common sense.
I've always used Pennzoil ultra platinum in the past but it doesn't meet ford's latest spec (yet) I'm currently using Castrol edge and hoping Pennzoil updates their 5w-30 ultra platinum formula. I basically look for whatever oil has the highest off the shelf flashpoint based on their data sheet
Have you looked at Motorcraft full synthetic?
The specs look good on the full synthetic, 455 degree flash point. The question is how well it holds up after use. If anyone has a UOA for the motorcraft full synth feel free to post it.
Yea I noticed that. Ford should change the displacement when they redesign engines to avoid confusion with old models (especially ones with a bad rep)
Appreciate the info and insight on flashpoints for oil, this is something I’ll keep in mind for my truck for future oil changes.That's an old iteration of the 2.0 Ecoboost, it has been updated extensively since and latest iteration has been reliable (if made in Spain like the Maverick 2.0 is). This is my third 2.0 Ecoboost and even while people were blowing up their old Focus ST 2.0 motors mine ran very strong on factory everything up until I sold it with about 150k on it. These motors NEED fresh, high quality synthetic oil and clean factory spec coolant. Follow the factory maintenance intervals if you want to pay for a new motor or test the validity of your extended warranty. Did I mention that in the fine print of many extended warranties they can and will replace your blown motor with a used junkyard motor?
Also, on the Maverick version of the Ecoboost they no longer cut the trench between the cylinders since that was a known failure point for the headgasket.
Lastly, look at the carbon buildup in the piston rings. This is again from a combination of poor maintenance and low quality oil. I get a lot of grief from people for basing my oil changes on used oil analyses but it seems to be working for me and changing oil more frequently especially since I do it myself is so much cheaper than replacing an engine. Every once in a while I send my used oil out for analysis to Blackstone Labs and when it comes back I'm almost never happy with the viscosity specs and the flash point of the oil, both of which are degraded because of fuel dilution. It's just an inherent repercussion of direct injection and nothing you can do will mitigate it, not even a catchcan. If you use an inferior oil no catch can will save your engine because cylinder temps for a DI turbo motor can approach 400 degrees. Guess what? You have oil on your cylinder walls to lubricate the pistons. If you have a low flash point that oil on the wall and in your piston rings is going to burn and cause carbon buildup and no amount of fuel injection/system type cleaners will help those rings once they are stuck from carbon buildup. Sometimes I get my used oil analysis back from blackstone it'll have a flashpoint in the range of 260 degrees yet they will say "We think you can run this oil for at least 3,000 more miles" and I want to tell them, thanks Scientists but no thanks. Take what blackstone labs says with a grain of salt and use common sense.
In my opinion, the only way to treat carbon buildup on the pistons and in the piston rings is to prevent it from happening in the first place. As for the valves, nothing you can do, not even a catchcan will prevent carbon buildup on them. The only thing that could prevent carbon build up on the valves would be some kind of water or meth injection system but it's an expensive and complicated setup, requires reularly refilling the system's tank and I'm sure more than just that, I never considered adding it to either of my previous ecoboost 2.0 engines. I did walnut blast the valves on both every 30k miles, on my Focus ST I did run an aftermarket air oil separator and it didn't seem to help with valve carbon buildup because most of the buildup comes from oil seeping past the valve seals and guides onto the valves so a catch can wouldn't even do anything to prevent that. I didn't bother spending money on one for my Escape 2.0 and I didn't notice any difference in carbon accumulation after 30k miles and I won't put one on my Maverick either. As for seafoam or berrymans, I'm just not a fan of running the stuff mixed in my oil. I'm not convinced you can ever really flush your engine well enough to get that stuff out and my fear would be that it would contaminate any oil I do put into the system since you'll never get all of the oil/seafoam/berrymans mixture out when you do change the oil. I don't have any scientific methodology behind that opinion, it's just how I feel and with about 300k combined miles on 2 previous 2.0 Ecoboost engines I'll stick with my successful formula which seems to be; good quality oil changes with an oil change interval based on UOA and cleaning the valves every 30k miles.
