[dgc333]

FWIW my mileage has increased about 1.5 mpg with each tank full. I am just shy of 1000 miles and the last tank full was 22.9mpg.

Are you sure the dealer used 10W-30? The prefered oil is 5w-30 unless you operate in very high ambients. Even if you told them to use 10w-30 the guy outback may not have gotten the word.

Could the dealer have made some update to the ECM based on a tech bulletin without telling you? I had a Ford one time that started to develop a hesitation off idle around 8000 miles. I brought it in for the dealer to check. He tossed my K&N, said it was the cause of the problem and charged me $15 for a new paper filter (my wife picked up the car, by the time I got back the K&N was gone, likely in the mechanics car). Anyway, the service manager told me that if I brought it in every 5000 miles for service I would need to worry about the hesitation anymore, they would keep in tip top shape. I latter found a tech bulleten that describe the problem and the fix was to disconnect the TPS while the car was running, shut it off, reconnect the sensor and restart. A bug in the adaptive programing would cause the ECM to back it self into a corner and the sensor disconnect reset the factory defaults. They never mentioned this too me.

Anyone considering Syntetic oil in these cars I wholely endorse the use in a turbo engine. I put 240,000 miles on my first 2.2 turbo and it was still running strong when my son totaled it. My current 2.2 turbo 2 has 176,000 miles and I just had the head off for a gasket change and I still can see honing marks on the cylinder walls. This engine has been trouble free too.

I would recomend waiting to you have 7-8k miles before making the change though, just to make sure everything is broken in.

The other thing I have always done on my 2.2 motors (actually all motors) is try and cross reference into a larger filter. The 2.2 turbo motors will take the full 1 qt capacity slant 6, big block mopar, Ford v8 filter (Fram # PH8A), my 2.5l v6 Avenger will accept this filter too. The 2.4 NA motor calls out the same little tea cup sized filter as my 2.2 did, I noticed in the Owners Manual the 2.4 turbo has a differnt number so it may be a larger filter to start with but if there is clearance the PH8A size filter will be used.