Originally Posted By: Merkava_4
Originally Posted By: Marco620
Car calls for 0w20.
You think 0W-20 lubricates better than 5W-30 ?
It does during cold starts at the North or South pole!
Apart from the brass monkey factor, using an 0w20 rather than a 5w30 will result in a slightly faster warm up time. That will reduce top end engine wear figures if you do a lot of short tripping.
For most cars that are not used for heavy towing, based in a desert area or subject to very high OAT's,
there is nothing wrong with using a top of the range major brand (Mobil, Castrol, Shell/Penn, Valvoline or Liqui Moly) full synthetic 0w20. YEABUT, that is only true until the end of what I call the mid life period, which if I was to put a figure on it is 100K miles or 10 years, but is better defined by oil consumption. The OC should fall slightly during the extended run in period and then remain constant assuming the car is subject to the same type of use for a long period. Once is starts to increase above about a liter per 5K, per liter engine capacity I would think about checking the crank vent system and assuming that is good (It should be if you use a good oil changed often enough), move up to an 0w30 or even a high mileage oil.
Use the Castrol oil finder to check what they think is the best oil and Max OCI. If you want to cheap out Castrol GTX is normally cheaper than Mag. It seems to produce just as good UOA figures for short OCI's (The figures I looked at were for 5K miles).