Apr thru Aug, hottest summer in memory here, I decided to try 5w20 in my car. I tried lugging the engine as much as the auto transmission would let me, but still I could not bring out much lead.
The engine felt more responsive and powerful with this oil, and there was only a little more noise. It sounded like the old QS winter blend after it had sheared down to 9.2 cSt, and while climbing mountains in the heat during the road trip. Fuel economy dropped a tad after I changed the oil back to Pennzoil 5w30. The reason I put in clean oil was because I had one time where the timing belt tensioner failed to pump up quickly. This makes a rubber slapping against plastic sound for a few seconds as the loose belt apparently slaps against the cover.
Iron in this UOA is 3 ppm, if you subtract the 2 ppm from the VOA. BUT, the drain plug magnet collected three times as much powder as last summer's road trip of almost twice the mileage, where the UOA showed a higher iron reading.
Why does the UOA not reflect the amount of iron powder caught by the magnet. Is the magnet removing ALL the iron from mechanical wear? The ppm/mile in the UOA for this summer interval was the same as last year's, but the magnet had three times as much stuff on it. Could the UOA only be detecting iron corrosion, with my magnet removing all the wear particles?
Code:
Ok, so the CODE thing isn't working so well, but it's good enough to see the recent results. oil filter was Supertech 3593, oil was Havoline 5w20 SM, air filter has about 25,000 mi of use. Magnetic drain plug is a couple of rare earth bar magnets sitting in a couple of pockets I drilled into the drain plug. One magnet has N pointing up, while the other has the S pole up, so there's a really strong field set up in the 1/8" gap between the two. The soft metal wear looks really low this time, despite the low viscosity, but there was much more iron slime on the magnet than I expected after this distance. The last time I got this surprise from the magnet was when I used Auto Prix 10w30 SM for 5000 km one summer. I wonder if the oil chemistry is at fault. If I can find a xw20 that doesn't allow quite so much iron wear during short trips, I'll be very happy. I liked the extra power and fuel economy. Oil consumption with 5w20 was minimal, just like usual. It might use one quart in 25,000 miles. No visible metal bits were found in the pleats of the oil filter.
2001 Subaru Legacy 2.5L non turbo 7926km Wal Mart recycled 10w30, 11123km Mobil 1 0w20/0w30 mix, 4500 km Redline 5w20, 12,000 km Quaker State Winter Blend 5w30, 9000 km QSWB5w30, 7800km Havoline 5w20 Jul-Oct, Dec-Jun, Nov-Feb, Oct-Dec, Dec-Apr2006, Apr-Aug 2006, (VOA) Fe 5.3 12 6.6 6 7 5 (2) Cr 0.8 1.4 1.1 0 0 0 (0) Ni 0 0 0 0 0 0 Ti 0 0 0.1 -- -- -- Ag 0.3 0 0.5 0 0 0 Al 2.8 6.4 7.1 4 8 3 (1) Pb 0 1.6 4.7 1 1 1 Cu 3.0 1.9 2.8 2 1 3 (1) Sn 0 0 0.1 0 0 0 Si 9.9 11 14 7 10 8 (4) Na 0 5.7 15 9 9 4 (3) K 0 0 1.5 4 0 1 (1) B 3.0 133 16 -- -- -- Ba 0.4 0.2 1.1 -- -- -- Mo 1.2 67 560 71 63 343 (482) Mg 11 29 10 -- -- -- Ca 1969 2709 2805 -- -- -- P 850 771 1203 -- -- -- Zn 970 1009 1329 842 804 688 (823) S 3052 1938 5022 -- -- -- Mn 116 77 3.0 -- -- -- V 0 0 0.3 -- -- -- Fuel 0 -- -- 0 0 0 Gly 0 -- POS 0 0 0 Oxi 42 82 114 112 79 -- Nit 31 63 14 38 46 -- Sul 52 73 78 62 79 -- ZDDP -- -- 39 -- -- -- TBN 4.40 5.22 5.48 2 2 -- Kv40 -- 52.8 -- -- -- -- Kv100 10.4 10.2 9.2 9.2 9.5 8.0 VI -- 185 -- -- -- -- H2O 0 0 0 0 0 --
Ok, so the CODE thing isn't working so well, but it's good enough to see the recent results. oil filter was Supertech 3593, oil was Havoline 5w20 SM, air filter has about 25,000 mi of use. Magnetic drain plug is a couple of rare earth bar magnets sitting in a couple of pockets I drilled into the drain plug. One magnet has N pointing up, while the other has the S pole up, so there's a really strong field set up in the 1/8" gap between the two. The soft metal wear looks really low this time, despite the low viscosity, but there was much more iron slime on the magnet than I expected after this distance. The last time I got this surprise from the magnet was when I used Auto Prix 10w30 SM for 5000 km one summer. I wonder if the oil chemistry is at fault. If I can find a xw20 that doesn't allow quite so much iron wear during short trips, I'll be very happy. I liked the extra power and fuel economy. Oil consumption with 5w20 was minimal, just like usual. It might use one quart in 25,000 miles. No visible metal bits were found in the pleats of the oil filter.
Back to the original poster. Like UOAs, I highly recommend you don't judge your results based on one OCI's drain plug collections. Something could actually be wearing abnormally, and the oil will unjustly get the blame. Could aalso be that the oil filter media has ruptured, or the bypass valve is defective.
I don't even do the Patman flush myself anymore, not even when I switched my wife's Civic from GC to regular Syntec.
