Got this car recently and thinking of running autorx through it since I was not the one caring for it before. Car has 33k miles. (The high pressure fuel pump failures have made a name for these turbo engines)
Searching the web and bitog, the BMW high performance synthetic oil seems to be castrol 5w-30 and conpatible with autoRX? Maybe with other additives to get the 15k oil changes bmw does?
Can I assume this is group III and do the cleaning and rinsing phases with it?
-- Edited by jdlong on Wednesday 9th of March 2011 10:12:45 AM
You will be only running a short oil change interval of 2500 miles for the cleaning part of the application and 3000 miles for the rinse. Regular Castrol GTX would work just fine for such a short duration. From what I hear the 15K oil change interval suggested by BMW is way too long. 7500 miles seems to work much better with the full synthetic. After your cleaning application, you may want to consider running the Auto-Rx maintenance dose with each oil change.
If your motor requires BMW 10w60 synthetic to maintain your warantee, there is an application for this specific oil. There is no conventional or group III synthetic available in a 10W60 spec. However, you may run Auto-Rx with the 10W60. You will add Auto-Rx at a rate of 3 fluid ounces per quart of motor oil. Then operate the car as you normally would for 4500 miles. If you have known heavy sludge in the motor, change out the filter at the 1500 mile mark and then again at the 3000 mile mark. In your case with only 33,ooo miles, it is unlikely that you have heavy sludge. After completing the 4500 miles, have the oil changed out, change filter and run a 5000 mile oil change interval as the rinse. Most folks have great results running the 10W60 for only 7500 to 8500 mile oil change intervals. The use of an Auto-Rx maintenance dose with each oil change will help keep this motor clean.
It is the BMW branded 5w-30 "High Performance Synthetic" (which I believe is just Castrol 5w-30, a group III but I do not know if they added anything in the branding process to make it incompatible with auto-rx)
If it is castrol syntec, a group III, I think I can just clean and rinse with the same (or any group III) without raising any warranty red flags.
