Recent content by FCD

Whatever floats your boat!

I know that, they are still easily available all over. I am Oululainen myself 😉 but expatriated to Spain for many years.

I would flush the system and switch to G05.

For those of you who still believe European oils are all Full Saps High HTHS that era is over, it has been for a few years now, 99% of manufacturers now spec Low / Mid Saps and HTHS, we got DPFs much earlier than in the US, and now GPFs too. I can see the point of DPFs on Diesel Cars as many...

Most of their oils are in reality run of the mill oils , not bad but not outstanding. Only their 300V line of oils can be really considered outstanding as they are PAO/Ester based.

Valvoline VR1 20W50 conventional is around 5.0 iirc. I've used it several times, definitely made a difference on the oil pressure. Sadly where i live it's become too expensive so i don't buy it anymore, something like 45€ / 5L

Mannol like other "smaller" brands doesn't really care about official manufacturer approvals. They typically just state in their data sheets something like meets the requirements of *X y or z * specification. Their oils are not necessarily bad for the most part but some VOAs and UOAs i've seen...

I don't think there would be any issues with mixing them. To be honest i have never really liked Castrol, from my personal butt dyno experience it has just made the engines in my cars sound more rough and unpleasant, just my subjective experience. But my experience so far with this new GTX SP...

I would agree for that particular engine synthetic is the best option. Here it's still easy to find conventional 15W40 or 20W50 PCMOs and HDEOs. But the price difference now is much narrower between conventional and Syn Blends.

Here the new version is a API SP A3/B4 Syn Blend, i assume Group 2/3. But yeah, the data sheet and the description of the oil on the TDS is pretty lacking as expected from Castrol.

Any A3/B4 oil is going to have 1000-1200ppm ZDDP, same goes for any 229.5 oil, as both are Full Saps and High , 3.5 or more HTHS. M1 5W50 is not a bad oil at all if you want to try it, yes it will tend to shear especially if you drive it hard but it'll just shear a bit to a thick 40 grade. I...

The N54 is not one of BMW's finest engines that is well known so I'm not surprised really.

No way it's 2.9. That's just the minimum requirement, Castrol rarely gives out the real HTHS ,if ever.

In places like Norway, Sweden or Finland it is illegal to drive on summer tires in winter from x date until y date. I am Finnish and recently saw a Finnish registered BMW 5 Series on Studded tyres here in Spain lol

I base my oil choices off the butt dyno ofcourse.