Cool. Thanks Craig.

Noticed the car is at home now...what happened?

Yup, just got it back last night. Verdict is in from Ellis'. He pulled three codes...same one I pulled about the exhaust solenoid, second one was electronic throttle, and third was A/C pressure switch. He had a look, and the timing belt was all good fortunately. He cleaned the exhaust solenoid screen and it was still pulling the code, so he just replaced the solenoid, and all was fine. He figures the throttle had some crud in it, and combined with the extra cold and condensation, it put the car into limp mode. So he figures it was unrelated to the solenoid. So he cleaned the throttle out, and said its fine. And the A/C? Well, the system was BONE DRY. Zero pressure. He figures there's a leak somewhere, but can't locate it due to it being cold out and pressures not building up. So he recharged that for now.

$500 and I'm out the door. They had driven the car a bit, and all was well, and its been fine for me so far. Sent an email and invoice to the dealership, and they say they'll get back to me today. Finger's crossed. I told them I was really unhappy, and that I was concerned they hadn't properly inspected the car if the the A/C never had anything in it. Pretty sketchy really. But I'm glad I've got the car back, and that it wasn't anything major!

Email is in from the dealership. They're covering the bill for all of this. Very good news.

Sweet!

Pretty happy. Still not convinced they inspected the car properly if the A/C system was completely discharged, but its good this current stuff was covered at least.

Wow - nice win for a change.

Well, check engine light is back on. Back into Ellis' it goes....

"Intake control solenoid." Same as last time just on the intake side. Weird. Warranty is up, so it won't be covered. Jack is going to look at it hopefully tomorrow.

Some feedback please: what's the consensus with everyone here regarding running synthetic oil in a car that's never had it run?

I found out from the dealership that this car has been on non-synthetic from day one. The oil has been changed regularly, and its had hot oil flushes frequently too. But I suspect the car has sat in traffic idling A LOT. A quick peak inside, on the filler cap and dipstick shows there's a lot of carbon buildup. My goal is to get things cleanup up internally, so stuff doesn't continue to get clogged. My only thought is to change the oil very regularly for the first while.

So, what would you guys do? Would you run synthetic in something this old? What else would you do to get things cleaned up?

I'd get some cheap synthetic...Cdn Tire Formula One...and run it for a trip to Kimberly, drain it and put in some better stuff. I might even put a liter of tranny fluid in to wash things out. I wouldn't hesitate to run synthetic in any engine, no matter the age. That's just me though...

No, Dale, it's not just you. Though I wouldn't bother with the cheap stuff since this car's been babied other than the lack of synth.

Don't expect miracles, Greg, but Roberta's 850 had a ton of leaks before I started running Mobil1, and within the year they were all gone. It cleared up the PCV system, or at least it "undamaged" the seals, and the engine was good for another 120,000 km in our hands.

Cool. Thanks guys. I'm hoping if I change the oil more frequently for the first while, and run the car on the highway more that some of this stuff will clear up. Looking through the filler cap on this car, you'd swear the oil was never changed.

The 850 was pretty black when I got it, and it was a dark brown when I pulled it apart, without TOO much crap laying around. Keep in mind that this was after 120,000 km of synthetic oil changes, and a pretty subjective comparison to boot. The PCV system in those cars plug up with gook pretty easily and I attribute the synthetic oil for clearing that up and "solving" the oil leakage, but I think I got lucky more than anything.

You could run a crankcase cleaner/solvent through the car if you want, that may help clean up the gook. I have heard that diesel fuel or automatic trans fluid are also good for cleaning out the engine - diesel would be used like the crankcase cleaner - 15-20 minutes at most, in the garage - and ATF is something you can mix in with the engine oil and run for a full change, though I'd wait for summer to do that.

For what that's worth, I did this in my 780 when I first got it. I ran a bottle of GM top end cleaner through it, drained the oil. I ran another bottle through it, drained the oil. I ran a bottle of seafoam through it while I was seafoaming the valves/combustion chamber, drained the oil/cleaned the plugs and added a litre of ATF. 1000 km later I changed the oil again and started running synthetic. It was still black and gross when I pulled that engine apart, as the pictures showed, but I'd put on less than 20,000 km over the course of 4 years so the synthetic didn't really get the chance to do whatever it MAY have done in the 850.

I know it sounds like snake oil but it's worked for me in the past http://www.auto-rx.com/ If you check out BITOG most on there believe in it. Once clean I would switch to synthetic, your car doesn't have that many km's.