I recently took my my baby in for a tune. I have a 84 sport coupe camaro. She was running sluggish, but still ran fairy smoothly before I took her in. Mechanic changed rotor, caps, wires, etc...& said the plugs where still good.

Got to the oil change & put synthetic 10w30 oil in the car to start. Bad idea ! When I drove it down the block from the shop, she started running rough. The tech suggested going to get some Lucas oil stabilizer and some 10w40 regular motor oil.

Came back and added that to the mix and she is still unhappy. Now they say I need a new oil pump at minimum. I don’t want to screw things up any more than they already are and I need help getting to the bottom of things. Any help is appreciated ! Ive read some things about rotella t oil but that’s for diesel. some that say 10w30/ 10w40 is fine for my car but it clearly isn’t working.

 

10w30 and 10w40 are fine.

Your issue is definitely not related to the choice of oil. You need to fix your engine issue if you have low oil pressure., changing oil weights etc is not going to help you.

If the issue is not oil pressure related, maybe focus your efforts on looking at the ignition components that were recently installed; the things that will greatly affect how your engine runs.

Running a slightly incorrect oil weight is not going to lead to any performance issues, nor will it magically lead to a low oil pressure unless you used paper thin oil (which you didn't). Switching to synthetic will not wipe your cam lobes 1 block from the shop.

What kinda mechanic blames the oil for performance issues after literally just touching the ignition components? Sounds like this shop doesn't know what they're doing.

Also, plugs on these cars are copper, so last 20k miles max. Those should have been included in any 'tune up.' Theyre $2!

 

And that right there is where the problems start , with your interaction with the evil "shop" place . Giving them an open ended (= open WALLET) mandate that the car needs a "tune" all but assured the guy will replace all kinds of things that won't actually fix whats wrong with the car . It's been said about half a billion times here , maybe a million or more by Sofa himself ; "If your gonna own an antique car , you've gotta learn to do most if not all of the wrenching yourself" .

Trusting other people who normally see cars 10 years old or less to know all the ins and outs of a 30+ year old car is a recipe for financial/mechanical disaster .......

 

Hey man if your still looking into it I personally run valvolines high mileage full synthetic 5w30 but i live in southern California so our weather isn't to bad but a 10w30 regular or synthetic should work just fine i would keep away from the additive's tho