your thoughts on this statement

[oilcanboyd]

from a member on honda-tech.com

quote: use "5w30 you'll lose some horses with 1030 b/c it's thicker. i saw in a magazine with a civic and they did a tune up and changed oil with 1030, then dynoed it, numbers were lower than baseline, so they changed the oil, and the numbers jumped back up. i dunno how accurate that is though, i don't have any real experience."

 

[Patman]

It's possible to have a 5w30 that is thicker at operating temp than a 10w30, but generally speaking, within the same brand, the 5w30 and 10w30 both have similar viscosities at 100c. But if you take Mobil 1 10w30 at 9.8cst at 100c, and compare it to Amsoil 5w30 which is 11.9cst at 100c, then it's true, it's thicker.

But to say that you'd lose power, that's a bit drastic. Going from 10cst to 12cst won't cause any noticeable loss in power. Going from 5w30 to 20w50 would, but even then it's not going to be much more than 5hp (on a 300hp engine that is, on a 130hp Honda, much less)

 

[Ken2]

Always keep in mind that car magazines have two goals...to say something good about their advertisers' products and to make their readers feel smart. It's very seldom that any of these magazines write anything that's truly complete and comprehensive or tries to tell the reader something that's true but not what the reader already believes in.

Ken

 

[oilcanboyd]

when i first read this guys statement i thought that it was untrue b/c they are both 30 wt. oils at operating temp. so is it true that 10w-30 would be thicker than a 5w-30 at operating temp.?

 

[mdv]

quote:

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Originally posted by oilcanboyd:
when i first read this guys statement i thought that it was untrue b/c they are both 30 wt. oils at operating temp. so is it true that 10w-30 would be thicker than a 5w-30 at operating temp.?

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It's actually a little more complicated. To be classed as an SAE 30 wt. oil the lubricant must fall into a range, 9.3-12.5 cSt. Anywhere in that range is acceptable, so it's possible that a 10W-30 can be thicker than a 5W-30, but it's also possible that a 5W-30 can be thicker than a 10W-30. The difference is most noticeable between brands. Patman mentioned Amsoil 5W-30 and Mobil 1 10W-30. Amsoil is thicker.

 

[digitaldrifter91]

if u guys are talking about thickness...why is syntetic gives more power..cause its thinner right? i heard that the thinner the more power cause of less resistance..thats why when some dyno their car with a certain oil they get differnt results. well thats what i read in the past years...i dont really believe it..hehe the only oil thats in my car is 10w-30 =)

 

[jason07-1zzfe]

Yes its true somewhat. But at the expense of film thickness. not worth 1%power IMO, and you couldn't even measure that on a dyno so they had to be using different types of oil or else its fake.

Synthetic (usually) makes more power because esters are a FM and it also has less internal fluid friction.