Time to reach a stable oil temperature.
- Thread starter Guisnu
- Start date
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- Jun 20, 2025
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- 123
Needless to say, it is highly ambient temperature dependent due to 2 reasons, firstly it effects your starting temperature, secondly it effects the cooling performance.
On my car with a heat exhcanger (Toyota GR86, which is essentially identical to Subaru BRZ), I treat 180F as the begining of my operating temperature and only push the car after that point., and used MX5+ OBD reader to calculate on average how long it takes to reach the operating temperature when I moved from 5w30 to 5w40.
With an average 5w30 (medium thickness and hths) it takes about 6 minutes. With a 5w40 race oil (high hths of 4.0 and ester base), it takes about 9 minutes. Both are average durations I have seen on the exact same route with ambient temperature ranging betwen 80f-90f, average between both groups being 84f vs 85f, which are near identical meaning that the difference here can not be attributed to a difference in ambient temperature, route or driving style.
On my car with a heat exhcanger (Toyota GR86, which is essentially identical to Subaru BRZ), I treat 180F as the begining of my operating temperature and only push the car after that point., and used MX5+ OBD reader to calculate on average how long it takes to reach the operating temperature when I moved from 5w30 to 5w40.
With an average 5w30 (medium thickness and hths) it takes about 6 minutes. With a 5w40 race oil (high hths of 4.0 and ester base), it takes about 9 minutes. Both are average durations I have seen on the exact same route with ambient temperature ranging betwen 80f-90f, average between both groups being 84f vs 85f, which are near identical meaning that the difference here can not be attributed to a difference in ambient temperature, route or driving style.
Just did a bit of logging on my Sportwagen. 85 deg F ambient. Cold start after sitting overnight to make a Target run so oil/coolant at same temp as ambient to start. Coolant to 190 deg F in under 5 minutes. Oil to 200 deg F in ~10 minutes. Normal driving/mixture highway type cruising with in-town. I'll grab a data log tomorrow morning so you can see how it warms up to make sure my BITOG overlords can see a visual on this.
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