I switched to synthetic at 153 miles. Some people would say that was too early. My question is how will I know if it was too early??
What will I see in the way of symptoms from using synthetic too early? Will it start to lose power or use oil or what? What evil lurks in my engine that is just waiting to mess with me/

Just asking.

 

You didn't switch to early to start with. There is nothing lurking in your engine. Lots of new vehicles come factory filled with synthetics. The only things missing in synthetics are the undesirable elements that are to expensive to refine out of petroleum. Enjoy and stop worrying.

 

I switch bikes at 100 miles, cars at 1000-3000. Never a problem. All the Harley CVO bikes come with Syn3 as factory fill.

 

Hi and welcome to the forum.

I don't think it makes agreat deal of difference these days, since most motors have been run at the factories, and as said many come with synthetic. The only caveat I would put on that is if the oil manufacturer you choose states a minium. RedLine does for example, and I have to asume that since they make the stuff they know their oil better than I. I got past this by using HD Syn3 for the first 3000 miles and switching to RedLine aftre that. Some of the HD's come with Syn3 so I have to figure that is ok.

You might want to read some of the other threads as this has pretty much been covered before and in fact there is a thread running now in a similar tone.

 

The deal is piston ring seating. A good TRUEsynthetic oil will work so well, that the rings take longer to seal correctly. They will still seal, it just takes longer. The engine will smoke just a tad - not enough to notice, but enough for a sniffer to detect. Just like a new engine does, but for more miles. You'll use a little more oil. Again, just like a new engine does, but for longer.

Ring seating is not based just on miles; heat cycles also matter. Since my first thousand miles included quite a few heat cycles, I changed to synthetic at 1,000 miles. Not a problem. If you did a lot of long rides in that first thousand miles, I wouldn't switch just yet.

Some car and bikle engines come from the factory with a synthetic oil. But those engines are built for it (supposedly). The cylinder walls are honed with a finer stone, and a differant ring material is used. So to say that the corvette engine comes with M1 from the factory then it must be OK for my new Harley engine is not correct.