Originally Posted by dogememe
Originally Posted by Patman
Originally Posted by loneryder
Why 16 and not 15 or 10? Where did they come up with 16?
I'm guessing they did it to avoid confusion with oils that have viscosities that begin with 10w or 15w.
This is an interesting point. Several times have people bought 20w-50 instead of 0w-20 or 5w-20 because "it has 20 in it" I try to tell people they have the wrong thing before they pour 20w-50 into a new-ish car but most people don't care.
Per the early papers, that's exactly it they wanted to steer away from the 5s and 10s and confusion.
The 20, 30, 40, 50 were basically (and loosely) bsed on time to flow through a particular viscometer, and in the 20 range, as there are a lot less seconds than at 50, the band became ridiculously broad (20s never used to be ABLE to shear out of grade).
When they introduced the sub 20 grades, they narrowed the 20 (now they drop out of grade), introduced the new grades, and allowed them to overlap in their KV100s (HTHS is where it's at...and no, I'm not going to take the OP's silly little pokes to start more arguments...it's unbecoming to deliver the jabs, which have no place in a product discussion, and would only lead to the inclusion of "scary" papers and science, which StevieC believes has no place on BITOG).
Following is a chart demonstrating what I mentioned about the overlap in the new grades...all those with weak constitutions, and an overly developed fright response please look away...
