I had a recent conversation with my mother about her dealer scheduled oil change for her Cadillac srx.

They talked her into what they call a fuel injection performance kit for $100. Not sure exactly they did, but I'm guessing they put some injector cleaner in. The car only has 18,000 miles on it. I think that’s way too early.

Second they replaced her oil with castrol syntec blend oil. From what I've read it’s not quite synthetic oil. They start with petroleum and then chemically alter it, vs mobil 1 uses chemically altered molecules and starts from there. Her srx says right on the oil filler cover only run synthetic mobil 1. Yet they put this in t here. I think i may go have a talk with the service manager and ask him to explain his reasoning about the fuel injection thing, and about putting non synthetic oil in a car that recommends it. I'm not gonna attack the guy, but i wanna make him sweat a bit and see what i can get outa him.

Any advice... should i just leave it alone or is the castrol sytec blend really that much worse than mobil 1

 

My shop recommends the FI service every 12-15k miles, even if the car only has 15k on it. Its more than just dumping stuff in the tank. We use BG chemicals. Also, I'm not sure of a castrol syntec blend, I know we carry castrol syntec but its states fully synthetic on the bottle.

I'd check on it as a good son but make sure you let the SM know that you don't want anyone screwing your Mom over. Then make sure she asks for him every time she goes in and that she doesn't want anyone else to help her. At the same time if hes shady about anything, Id find somewhere else to service her vehicle.

 

Yeah, there is a Syntec blend, saw some at autozone today. They should have just put the full synthetic in though, because the blend is only like $1 less per quart. No big deal though, she probably isn't racing a SRX so just about any kind of oil will be fine in it.

 

FI service I did at my old dealer was a rip off, pour in some **** to the gas tank and a bottle of top end cleaner. I don't buy into most of those services, all they do is make the dealer/shop tons of money.