Other Oils To Use In My 4.2ltr Nissan Patrol

Danny...... use any good quality product that meets the specs of you vehicle.

People get carried away with little things that make no difference.

Do you buy the best of every thing else that you use in life?

If it makes you feel good buy the most expensive.

You will find most will stick to one brand for there entire life whether it's good or bad....... my daddy used it and his daddy used it....... now I use it.

If some one gave me evidence to say if you use this product you will get 86000 kilometres and with this one you will get 136000 kilometres I would use it, but if someone said you will get 723000 out of this product and out of this other product you would get 727000, I don't think I would really care.

How long are you going to keep your Patrol..... 30-40 years.

If I sound cynical then thats because I am.....

Snake oil sellers of the 18 and 1900's come to mind.

G'day Danny
I sort of agree with Ocool in some areas.
I look at it from not only the life point of view but to try to ensure reliability.

If you lose oil from a component ie seal leak and the level gets to a critical area I think the little bit better oil in there may save you because of it's more stable characteristics.

Most engine oils will give reasonable results and while it may be still going at 250,000km I believe the use of good oils will make it last longer and many do with due care.
I know a debt collector who had a 88 Camry auto, serviced privately and properly, which when I saw it last had over 1,000,000km without any engine internals being touched. This didn't happen by accident.

I have used Nulon diesel for turbo and found it performed well.

I decided for HJ61 12HT engine, Nulon Diesel or Mobil Delvac MX. Delvac will keep the engine internals clean and the use of flushes some people love to use are never ever needed. the oil performs.
I used Mobil full synthetic gear oil in diffs x 2 and gearbox and transfer so I had only one oil to carry. I didn't have an LSD so ok for that. I found it gave 22mpg when moving 4 ton rig on trips.
Currently in an LSD I have Castrol SAFXA as recommended by the Mobil lube people.

I have run some G10 Nulon in the power steer fluid, DEXRON 2 or 3 in '61 and it always seemed to keep it's lubricity well over time.

In contrast to some opinions, to me there seems a lot of people asking about repairs for diffs and gearboxes and engines. While I know it is possible the % is concentrated on a forum it seems to me that lesser than ideal lubrication and sometimes abuse could be the cause. I try to minimize both.

A long time ago I worked out/discovered the benefits of spending money on good lubrication and decided I can buy a lot of fuel and oil instead of the more costly repairs.
Cost is a factor but if money isn't the primary thing then do the best to suit the circumstances. ie Peter Brock ran NEO synthetic oil in his Oldhens although he had Mobil 1 on the door. I got some Neo from the importer who used to also sell it to PB in 44gal drums. One learned commentator said PB team won the race by $500,000 of special gear.
I have also witnessed the same oil, only drained and filtered, used in 4 racing motor cycles for a whole season with no engine failures, Kawasaki, 600 series. Ducati replaced engines after every race to gain less reliability.
So if lube quality is important, use good stuff to suit the budget.

Many dealers who don't service correctly, if at all sometimes,and don't use the "normal best" lube quality and they see the vehicles get out of warranty to be either kept by the owner or sold when trading up. Whoever buys that vehicle, now has a vehicle which had eaten up some of it own life with wear and the continuing or new owner unfortunately finds this out down the track. I have fixed a few of those and they never got a chance at lasting
anywhere near 40 years or 700,000km.

We can all believe what we like I suppose. I, like most people, decided to work a certain way because of what I have experienced and seen. Is the earth still flat?

Ross M

Oils are far better specified than most of the public understand and the retailers like it that way.

I am no lover of Castrol engine oils, but for standard spec greases, gear lubricant oils and brake fluid...it is hard to pass up castrol for price and consistency.....Castrol (BP) also contract lubricant supply and packaging to many other brands.

Think about it....all of the minor lubricant brands have to buy at least their base product from one of the 4 major oil companies, quite often the minor brands are repackers and nothing more

Automatic transmission fluid is one of the highest quality, tightest specified lubricants on earth....and there realy is very little room to claim any improvement.......do some research.....it is realy special stuff......if the product meets the spec it will be fine.

I know there are "power streeing fluids" out there but Dextron II generally meets or exceeds the manufacturer spec.

I keep comming back to castrol gear lubricants, I tried some Nulon "Smooth Shift" in one of my gearboxes......it did nothing of the sort, went back to Castrol and the problems went away.....heard several reports the same.

Most important to get the correct specified oil in transmission, many 5 speed gearboxes resent the wrong grade.

Brake fluid is one of those things that is normally not changed enough, the stuff goes of and becomes corrosive...best changed annually, every 2 years at the outside.
Again another tightly speced item.....I'll continue to stick with Castrol.

We now have "Blue Grease", "Lithium complex", that will replace and outperform both the Lithium ( castrol LM) and bentonite greases ( castrol HTB) of the past.
It is a strongly water resistant grease.....originaly marketed by castrol as "APXT" now as "LMX" in large tubs or in 500g as boating grease.
Blue grease is pretty well a universal standard now, Any "Blue Grease" should be "Lithium complex" and should be functionaly identical...best to stick with the big 4 oil companies.
There are fortified versions of lithoum complex, to fill all the applications of the older greases, with teflon, graphite, moly or whatever.

If you buy the BIG tub ( 3 or 5 Kg cant remember) of LMX from the truck spares shop it will cost about twice what a 500g tub will cost at the auto retailer...you will use most of a 500G tub doing the front bearings on a 4wd if done right and you aren;t wastefull


Coolant...red or green...don't change between the two unles you do an exceptionally thorough flush.
Another fluid that is generally changed far to infrequently, alwaus mix with demineralised water.
Modern coolants contain PH buffers and other stuff, and these componenst are consumed doing their job of preventing corrosion...after they are spent the coolant becomes corrosive.
If you do not mix with PH neutral mineral free water from the start you piss some of that capacity up against the wall, buffering the added water

By far the best to change coolant anually, ya might push it out to 2 years, but beyond that is pushing ya luck.....even though some of the coolat packages my say 3 or 5 years.
AND make sure you run the correct concentration..toyotas in particular resent to coolant being too weak.....their concentration is twice the normal recommended.

I like and have use both Nulon engine additive and their coolant, but I stay away from their oils...I just dont think they have the resources or scale of production to compete with the big 4 oil companies.


There are some european oil companis trying to get ito the austrailan market.....one in particular has had some problems......one of the mines my nephew was working at has a lubricant contract with one of these companies...they where having lots of bearing failures, the traced the problem to the grease "splitting"..sort of like curdled milk.....the oils and fillers seperating and the lubricant function failing.


Best to stic with one of the 4 major oil companies or a specilised product that is known to perform.

cheers