Vero Beach Import Auto Service, Inc

It’s a clear brown when I put it in but 3000 miles later, it’s black. Why? Don’t worry about the engine oil turning black. It will lose it’s golden-brown colour within a few hundred miles of being put in to the engine. That doesn’t mean it’s not working. Quite the contrary – it means it is working well. It changes colour as it traps oxidised oil, clots and the flakes of metal that pop off heavily loaded engine parts.

My car used to ride really nice. Now it’s got 65,000 miles on it and it seems wallowy – the ride has gone to hell. How can I solve this?
Most car companies won’t tell you this, but shock absorbers and springs are pretty much end-of-life after 60,000 miles of average use. You need to change them. And if you do, then change them all at once. It’s dangerous to do just the front, or just the back. Few people understand that shock absorbers make a lot of difference not only to the ride of your car, but the effectiveness of the brakes. With worn shocks, the wheels bounce and skip under braking. With good shocks they don’t. Guesstimates as to the difference at 100km/h can be as much as 10 metres difference in braking just because of the shock absorbers.

The most likely cause of this is the big rubber bush at the top of the front suspension mounts. If it has perished and worn out, then the top of the suspension is knocking against the inside of the suspension strut tower. Another symptom of this is if you park the car and turn the steering wheel from lock to lock, then move off slowly, there will be a “Spring” type noise as the suspension spring untensions. You should invest in new suspension bushes.

It’s almost certainly warped rotors that are causing the problem. The first time around, it’s always hard to tell what causes it. This sort of thing happens most often if you live in a mountainous area and use the brakes coming down mountain passes instead of relying on the drag from the engine. The other thing that can cause it is corrosion in the brake calipers. If the brake pistons aren’t retracting properly into the caliper housings, then they will be binding slightly on the rotor when you’re driving. Not enough to make any difference to the handling, but enough to overheat the rotors.
The solution is one of two things. You can either get the rotors re-machined where they’re placed in a machining tool that shaves off some of the metal around the face of the rotor to make sure both sides are parallel and flat again. The other option is to buy new rotors.

An unopened container should be good for about 3 years. See the engine oil bible page for full details on this topic.