Can I go from Synthetic back to regular oil?

99 civic 86k miles, previous owner had turbo installed (its stock looking,
not riced) and was running synthetic oil. Can I go back to regular oil?

 

Certainly. I feel synthetic is worth the premium, but other people don't.
It's your choice.

Mike

 

You can, but with an add-on turbo installed I would stick with
synthetic. Turbochargers can be very hard on oil.

Now if it was a stock engine I would say sure, no problem!

John

 

Should not go back, as the turbocharger is very hard on oil.

 

FWIW, our '85 Volvo just turned over 238K miles on the original turbo, even
though I never could convince my wife not to gun the engine when starting
and to let it idle when she pulled off the freeway into rest stops. It ran
on dino oil the first 20 years or so, and I just changed it to synthetic a
year or two ago.

That said, I think I've been mighty lucky. Water cooled turbos are pretty
sturdy, but treating it right is cheap enough. Synthetic gets my
endorsement, but do as you wish.

Mike

 

I dont want the turbo, I am using as a work car and have the turbo turned
way down. I am looking to trade it on something else now. I dont run it
hard, just up and down freeway to work everyday mostly. I think a seal is
leaking in the turbo as I am blowing black soot out the back and makes a
white bumper really nasty. Turning it down helped some but still smokes on
acceleration.

 

In my limited experience, turbo seal failures result in shocking billows of
blue smoke filled with oil mist and oil consumption measured in gallons per
hour. The black smoke makes me wonder if there is a mixture control problem;
adding a turbo requires some means of richening the mixture during boost to
suppress detonation, and that may not have been done right. I bet if you
look at the plugs you will find them sooted up.

Mike

 

I know it has aftermarket rail and higher cc injectors, plus a Hondata chip.