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- Sep 28, 2002
- Messages
- 39,798
And Gary Allen, you should know that up until more recent years in the U.S., our manuals also had the "up the viscosity with temperature" charts in the manuals.
Sure. I've seen a few in my time. Group 1 oils 3000 OCI's as the max...perhaps 5000 when unleaded fuel came around. Much has changed since then.
I suspect in most cases, there is good reason for this. Sure. There may still be.
Then suddenly, only pretty much in the U.S, these charts disappeared. Yes. This was surely due to energy policy ..but I don't think that this mandates that there is some deficiency in the specs that we currently have (yes, some exceptions apply). Otherwise we would not have 20 year old beaters still road worthy and would not routinely get 150-200k out of common passenger cars. These cars didn't just slip through the cracks in this energy policy. Oils were developed to get the job done. They do.
Gary, aren't the engines pretty much exactly the same anyway whether they are a 1.8T Volkswagen, 2.0 Mazda MZR, 1.6 Honda, etc running in Japan, Australia, Europe, U.S.?
I would assume so.
Why have their manuals for the exact same engines kept the temperature charts but the U.S. ones have not? In fact, even the exact same engines in the US had the chart on year and then it disappered on next years model year.
There could be several issues at play here. For example, in Australia, you can barely find a 30 weight oil ..yet I'm sure that their climate norms can be match somewhere in the US. Again, I keep looking for the massive failures of our engines. They just aren't giving up the ghost with all this numb abuse. How's that possible
With this reasoning in mind, your insinuation that that the manufacturers don't think ambient temperature should play a role in optimal viscosity selection for US cars is quite wrong.
Welp, I think that they do ..and I think that in most cases it isn't enough of a factor for them to mandate a heavier oil. Now we're a little more anal about things here ..so we're always going to exceed the need a good bit.
I think you knew this Gary cause you're too smart not to,
Well, I'll accept that you think that I'm smart enough to figure this out ..and it's not that I necessarily disagree with the assertion that ambient temps effect oil temps .. but it doesn't appear to alter any behaviors from our vast membership. You can live in Texas and use a 5w-30 ..you can live in Canada and use a 5w-30 (the cow and the horse example - both exist on the same diet - flawed, yes ..but it works)
So I'll stand with Ugly3's assertion that unless you're towing or are inducing some undue or abnormal stress to your engine (either in severity or duration of insult), there is no need to alter your visocity for higher ambeint temperatures. That is, unless you integrate the practice of doing something like going from a 10w-30 in the summer and switching to a 5w or 0w-30 in the winter as "moving up" for the warmer weather.
you were just playing devil's advocate
Naturally. So?
Sure. I've seen a few in my time. Group 1 oils 3000 OCI's as the max...perhaps 5000 when unleaded fuel came around. Much has changed since then.
I suspect in most cases, there is good reason for this. Sure. There may still be.
Then suddenly, only pretty much in the U.S, these charts disappeared. Yes. This was surely due to energy policy ..but I don't think that this mandates that there is some deficiency in the specs that we currently have (yes, some exceptions apply). Otherwise we would not have 20 year old beaters still road worthy and would not routinely get 150-200k out of common passenger cars. These cars didn't just slip through the cracks in this energy policy. Oils were developed to get the job done. They do.
Gary, aren't the engines pretty much exactly the same anyway whether they are a 1.8T Volkswagen, 2.0 Mazda MZR, 1.6 Honda, etc running in Japan, Australia, Europe, U.S.?
I would assume so.
Why have their manuals for the exact same engines kept the temperature charts but the U.S. ones have not? In fact, even the exact same engines in the US had the chart on year and then it disappered on next years model year.
There could be several issues at play here. For example, in Australia, you can barely find a 30 weight oil ..yet I'm sure that their climate norms can be match somewhere in the US. Again, I keep looking for the massive failures of our engines. They just aren't giving up the ghost with all this numb abuse. How's that possible
With this reasoning in mind, your insinuation that that the manufacturers don't think ambient temperature should play a role in optimal viscosity selection for US cars is quite wrong.
Welp, I think that they do ..and I think that in most cases it isn't enough of a factor for them to mandate a heavier oil. Now we're a little more anal about things here ..so we're always going to exceed the need a good bit.
I think you knew this Gary cause you're too smart not to,
Well, I'll accept that you think that I'm smart enough to figure this out ..and it's not that I necessarily disagree with the assertion that ambient temps effect oil temps .. but it doesn't appear to alter any behaviors from our vast membership. You can live in Texas and use a 5w-30 ..you can live in Canada and use a 5w-30 (the cow and the horse example - both exist on the same diet - flawed, yes ..but it works)
So I'll stand with Ugly3's assertion that unless you're towing or are inducing some undue or abnormal stress to your engine (either in severity or duration of insult), there is no need to alter your visocity for higher ambeint temperatures. That is, unless you integrate the practice of doing something like going from a 10w-30 in the summer and switching to a 5w or 0w-30 in the winter as "moving up" for the warmer weather.
you were just playing devil's advocate
Naturally. So?
