I'm going to be doing my first oil change sense owning the Cobalt and have a few questions:

#1 - What's the preferred brand of oil for this car? any favorites?
#2 - Should I make the switch to synthetic?
#3 - Where exactly is the oil filter on this engine?
#4 - How many qts. and what weight does the engine take?

 

pennzoil ultra or the mobil 1 gold cap

 

mobil 1 is recommended by GM, 5w-30

if you switch to synthetic, dont ever go back to conventional

 

Thank you gentleman, I appreciate it!

 

i use castrol syntec or edge... or pennzoil platinum

 

pennzoil platinum hasn't done me wrong yet.

imho synthetic is much easier on the engine and helps ensure long life of the motor.

when looking at the motor from the front if you tilt your head right and look to the right side of the intake manifold you should see a black cap with what looks like a huge socket pattern on it. thats the oil filter cap. i think its 1 1/4".

and its 5qts +/- of 5w-30

 

why?

 

this may be a noob question...but what should i use if i have no idea if the car has been getting synthetic or conventional all its life?

 

It has most likely been using conventional oil - if you switch to synthetic it will only help the cars performance, and if it's already using synthetic and you'd like so witch to conventional it won't do any damage either - lots of people say not too, but you should be ok.