Stir the pot- A x-w20 story

[m6scargo]

OK let me get this straight. Most of us agree that x-w20 is decent oil....Yes? The problem is that it is too thin for some applications....Agreed? However what real world tests do we have to prove either way? UOA's are good for about the same percentage as any other weights. The benefits could include a)Better fuel economy. B) Possibly having oil to vital parts faster. C) Little better cooling effect

D)Most are semi synth or at least good deal GrpIII E)Sheer stable

F)Cold startup help
Now........The most prolific reason that most are against it is because it is too thin and leading to the belief it can't protect as well as thicker oils In addition, the other argument is that it has been rolled out for CAFE reasons. I can see that and don't disagree. However for us that have vehicles spec'd for it, I currently have 2, we are not given a choice or an alternative. As per the US Government in order to use this in their vehicles it was the only oil to be allowed and must be readily available. So this leads me to a few interesting thoughts.

I keep hearing that it must be bad because the same cars in other countries use other weights. Have we considered that it is not "readily available" and thus is not spec’d?

European cars have fallen below domestic as least reliable... The typical driving for US and abroad is drastically different. And finally, a car maker which prides itself on reliability has switched over (Honda). I can't believe that they would do so without longevity studies and protection rates of these "thin" oils and allow 10000 mile OCI's with these oils

What I would like to seriously know is if I am destroying my vehicles for the sake of keeping them within warranty standards. A very tidy oxymoron.........

please keep opinion to a minimum and fact to a maximum as this is really worrying me

Enough that I am going to throw some 5w-30 in at my next oil change for the summer. I need some comfort.....please. I just do not see how we accept xw-30 yet denounce xw-20 as engine destruction

when they are not that far apart.

 

[darkdan]

Who says it protects as well?

http://www.dantheoilman.com/modular.xls

 

[Ugly3]

If Honda says 5w20 is the oil for their engines you can be sure they know it is providing all the protection needed. I run M1 5w30, almost a 20W, no problem. Rest easy!

 

[yannis]

It is simple.
If the car maker says you can use it, then it is OK.
If you push the engine, change the oil sooner than it is supposed to.
My car maker, daewoo, specifies a semi 10W40 in Greece. I have tested other grades, 10W40 was the best solution.

 

[bigpaulo]

I would use a XW-20 oil that has shown good results in UOAs (Mobil1, MotorCraft, ???) and not worry about it too much.

BTW, plug for patul, he's probably still trying to sell his stash of super-UOA-result-makin' M1 0W-20.

And if you're really worried about warranty, run M1 XW-20 at 3000 mile OCIs until your warranty expires, then put in whatever your thicker-is-better heart desires

 

[m6scargo]

Darkdan, Who says WHAT protects a s well. Are you talking abotu xw-30 or xw-20?

 

[John K]

DarkDan - it seems you have your weighted columns calculating incorrectly...should be b2/c2 and b2/d2 if you want the ppm per 1000 miles or am I missing something???

John

 

[dbf]

The ansewer to the 5w20 question can't be ansewered for several more years, millions of miles, and 100's of different engine types. There is however way to protect your engine, use a 5w30 or 10w30 that has a long time proven track record. For that matter what does 5w20 really do that a quality 0w30 or 0w40 can't do? 5w20 is a solution looking for a problem. 5w20 may not hurt but there is no evidennce that it helps either.

 

[darkdan]

It's not supposed to be ppm per 1000 miles. I set it up for how many miles to get 1 ppm. People are completely welcome to rearrange, slice, dice, cut, omit, divid, multiple, and skew the results to their little hearts content. Of course, in retrospect that might be an easier way to understand it for most. =)

I was a skeptic of 5w20 at first. But I said I'd hold off judgement for 5 to 7 years to see the long term effects. Then I made my spreadsheet and said, "HOLY CRAP!"

Now I don't care for 5w20.

Can you beat the odds? Sure. Can 5w20 give certain people with certain driving habits better results than 5w30? Sure.

However, there's a large group that smoke and get cancer. There's a smaller group that doesn't smoke and gets cancer. There's also a group that doesn't smoke and doesn't get cancer. To me, 5w20 users are the group that smokes 2 packs a day and doesn't get cancer.

For the average person who doesn't trend their vehicle, lose sleep at night thinking about oil, and uses the cheap stuff off the shelf....5w30.

If you personally get better results with 5w20 then I suggest sticking with it. However, odds are most people are going to get better results with 5w30.

 

[Thorn]

So, if I understand the spreadsheet correctly, I will get 1 ppm of iron by driving 347 miles with 0w20 and 5w20 (I grouped them together), and I will get 1 ppm of iron by driving 514 miles with 0w30 and 5w30 (I grouped them together too, but I didn't include the 10w30 or 5w40).

I can drive 1,548 miles with the 20w's to get 1 ppm of AL, or I can drive 2,216 miles with 0/5w30's to get 1 ppm of AL.

In other words, this is a "relatively" large sample of UOA results which shows that Xw20's result in higher FE and AL wear than 0w30/5w3's.

 

[m6scargo]

Question is where did these UOA's come from? These don't match what I have been seeing for xw-20's

 

[Brian Barnhart]

quote:

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Question is where did these UOA's come from?

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I believe darkdan said all the UOAs in his spreadsheet are from this site.

quote:

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Who says it protects as well?

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Motorcraft claims their 5W20 offers very good protection. They also said their 5W20 was better than their 5W30 at the time the 5W20 was developed. Keep in mind, however, that their 5W20 is semi-synthetic and their 5W30 they compared it to at that time contained no synthetic.

So according to Motorcraft, their 5W20 semi-synthetic oil was/is better than their dino 5W30. How much that really says, and whether that makes their 5W20 a great oil or not is debatable.

 

[the_oil_dealer]

we keep forgetting that the SAE grade of an oil is only one small part of the protection-equation. oil technology has advanced to such a degree that we get 5-20's performing as well as old school 10-30's... who's to say the 5-30's 10-30's ... 0-30's arent performing twice as well???

 

[427Z06]

quote:

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Originally posted by darkdan:
Who says it protects as well?

http://www.dantheoilman.com/modular.xls

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As far as I'm concerned, this is just data. There are so many unconstrained variables as to make it almost useless.

Reminds of a statistically valid sample of people that once showed that smoking a pipe indicated that you would live longer. However, after you adjusted for income level, the trend was totally reversed. In other words, a lot more rich people smoked pipes. Rich people tend to live in a better environment, drive safer cars, have better diets, and better health care, etc.

Just because you stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, it doesn't make you a scientist or engineer.

 

[buster]

quote:

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we keep forgetting that the SAE grade of an oil is only one small part of the protection-equation. oil technology has advanced to such a degree that we get 5-20's performing as well as old school 10-30's... who's to say the 5-30's 10-30's ... 0-30's arent performing twice as well???

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Wow, at least one person gets it.

 

[AEHaas]

Despite thousands of oil analyses I have yet to see any controlled studies. It seems nearly impossible to do, or at least very expensive to run such a study. I think we all use the results in our own way. Again, these oil tests are but a small piece of the puzzle.

My testing is mostly just for my own interest. Unless something is severely wrong with your engine as an antifreeze leak then any oil will look fairly good.

If you are trying to extend you oil change interval then yes, these tests are of great value. Oil tests are not that good at telling us what oils are good but rather how well a particular oil is holding up.

aehaas

 

[darkdan]

Those UOAs are all taken from this site. I did a search for modular motors and put it all onto a spreadsheet.

Lots of 5w20 fans nit-pick at the scientific aspect of the "study".

It's not a study! It's a spreadsheet of REAL results. People EXPERIENCED this. Wondering and "what ifs" aren't going to change the fact that of:

19 people that used 5w30
19 people that used 5w20

That on AVERAGE the 5w30s users experienced better results. Sure, some of the 5w20s beat the 5w30s, but that's beating the odds. No one oil suits all people.

 

[MGBV8]

Darkdan's stats represents a fair x section, however all specs of oil provide reasonable protection.

Even in high performance applications the differences between thick and thin mineral synth are marginal

http://www.carcraft.com/techarticles/116_0409_slip/index2.html

Future oil technology IMO will move towards 5W20 with improving quality oils, but at moment we are in a transitional phase.

 

[buster]

Interesting link

quote:

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During the testing, we noted that the 20W50 oil temperature seemed to remain much more stable during the testing. As we tested the thinner oils, each less viscous oil seemed to gain oil temperature much more quickly than its thicker cousins. We also saw an accompanying slight drop in oil pressure as we tested the thinner oils, which we expected. Once we assembled all the data, it appeared that the thinner 5W20 oil performed much better, but after averaging the data, compared to the thicker 20W50, the average power was only marginally better

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I wish they would have taken wear measurments.

 

[Idrinkmotoroil]

my belief is that 5w-20 does not protect as well as a 30 weight (or higher) on average, but the extra wear difference does not seem to be huge. Car makers have decided that the small amount of extra wear is worth the switch to a 20 weight. In your typical daily driving commute the extra wear likely isn't going amount to much over 100,000 miles , and the average car buyer nowadays doesn't keep a car for a very long time. I think it's been mentioned on this site that Honda did find extra wear in 20 weight oils in their testing but the wear wasn't large enough to cause concern and they could reduce the chance of harmful wear by adding addional anti-wear additives to the oil.

I don't know why European engines can't adapt to this lower weight oil. If a Ford Lightning can hold up well to a 20 weight oil with all of its ground pounding supercharged torque, then any manufacturer should be able to produce an engine that holds up equally well.