I keep seeing posts by people complaining about their low mileage RV's engine "blowing up" and I want to raise the alarm again about people buying Ford powered RVs with very low mileage for their age (i.e. 12K miles on a 2014). Most people only change oil according to the miles driven, thinking if it's just sitting alongside the house they do not need to. An RV like that may have only had one oil change in it's entire life. Ford Triton engines are critically dependent on Synthetic blend/full synthetic and the included additives. These oils are only good for about a year before they start being age-degraded (would you drive your car more than one year without changing oil?). The V10 is an overhead cam design with a follower between the valves and cams. That follower has a roller and pin with a steel-to-steel bearing surface. As long as oil is changed on schedule, that design is 300K mile capable. The rest of the engine will wear out before them. When oil is not changed when specified, those rollers are very prone to seizing on their pins. At first, there is no apparent evidence of this happening. The frozen roller will just slide on the cam surface. It may take several thousand miles but eventually it will start developing "traction" and when both surfaces get rough enough, the follower will get "spit out" of position usually jamming one of the valves open with fatal results for the engine. Warranty claims early on led Ford to require at least a synthetic blend oil to prevent this as conventional oils just were not up to the task. You will notice a lot of new vehicles also require a synthetic as engineers found they could build cheaper by letting the lubrication do more of the work (Ford could have spent more money putting needle bearings on those rollers). The synthetic oil strategy is often seen on cars with double overhead cams that have complex timing chain arrangements that will also trash the engine if they fail. If you buy a Ford engined RV with low miles for it's age, I STRONGLY recommend you have a mechanic pull the valve covers and make sure there are no seized rollers (there are 20 of them!). Very cheap insurance against the multi-thousand dollar expense of a replacement engine. While you are at it, have the front end checked. As chassis lubrication is done at oil changes, any grease in a low mileage/older RV is probably dry and useless. You can put 50,000 miles of wear on a front end on a 500 mile trip if the grease is bad. If you have ever owned a grease gun, you are aware of how the oil will separate from the grease and end up on the bottom of your toolbox drawer after a year. Same thing happens with the front end components.
