Factoid No 1: Incidents along the way.....

There were a few oddities during this long trip though there was nothing that constituted a show stopper.

Firstly, I reckon that over the last year or so the engine has started to use more oil than it used to. I've not measured it and it's not major so it might be difficult to tell really. I got an inkling that oil use was increasing after I used Halford's own brand oil. I'm sure that this oil doesn't last as long and I generally use Castrol GTX 10/40 'recommended for modern engines'. Do I have a modern engine? Dunno! I'm never sure which oil to choose. Obviously it's easy to choose between 'diesel', 'petrol' and turbo but what next? It seems that you can choose an oil for 'new engines' or 'older engines' and there seems to be a wide difference in price.

Here is a Castrol website containing a few data sheets about their oils. According to the GTX sheet, it is suitable for engines manufactured since 1990, so to be strict, my car is excluded but I use it anyway.

The Haynes manual suggests that I should be using SAE 10/40 to 15W40 so that seems to fit OK.

Just to add to the complication, there are different oils when you go abroad, and of course the containers may be written in a different language so it may get even more confusing. On this occasion I chose an oil called GTX2, which seems to be a completely different colour to the UK variety but appears to have the same spec. What does the '2' mean? I'll see if I can get that answer from the horses mouth....Castrol that is!