I have 22K on my Mercury Marauder and I did the Maintenance Dose at 18 K and noticed that when I changed my oil a few weeks ago the filter was a little heavy, I also noticed that when I did the Maintenance Dose at 18K a few hundered miles into it I could see that the oil on the dipstick was a little dark, I am on the Maintenance Dose again and I am wondering if when I change the oil again if it would be beneficial to do a 2500 mile clean phase followed by a 3000 mile rinse phase or should I just stick with the Maintenance Dose each time I change the oil, I definetly agree with what Frank has said about contaniments starting in the first 25,000 miles. The reason I am concerned is because this is a 4.6 DOHC Engine and I know the clearances on the newer engines are tighter than on the engines built 25 years ago. Any thoughts on this matter would be greatly appreciated because I do not want to ever go through what I had to do on my other car that has 355K. So Frank, Turbo Jim, Daryl, and anyone else please chime in before my next oil change, which will not be for a while.
Daryl, yes the car has 22K, I only mentioned the filter because I changed my Dad's car that same day, we both have 04 Marauder's, it was just that my oil filter was a little bit heavier than his, I had been doing the Maintenance Dose for 5K whereas my Dad had not, my observation of the filter might be irrelevant or not mean anything, now my filter was not anywhere near as heavy as my 83 El Camino when I did the Auto-Rx application, I bought the car with 10K on it , the guy who was the original owner said he changed the oil out at 3K and put in Amsoil XL 5W-20, in 2 years of owning the car he put on 10,000 miles, I bought the car in Long Island N.Y. so I do not know if he did alot of stop and go driving, when I got the car I changed the oil even though I think he said that he changed it out again at 8000 miles, he sold me the car because he got a job doing construction and did not want to drive the car to the construction site, since I have had the car I have not done any short trips , my observation was that 2 ounces of Auto-Rx changed the color of the oil after a few hundred miles whereas my Dad's oil looked brand new, my oil having a color change had me believing that some cleaning was going on in the engine and the weight of the used oil filter while only a little bit heavy had me thinking some cleaning was going on.
