Best 0W-20 readily available?

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Hey guys,

I was wondering, what is the best 0W20 currently available to buy in retailers? (Autozone, Walmart, etc...)

I used to buy PP 0W20 online, but would rather do something a bit less expensive. I think my only options really are Castrol Edge, M1 and Toyota 0W20.

What oil is the most robust for an OCI of around 7,500-8,500 miles? I do bi-annual OCI and my spring one is right around the corner. I am thinking Edge may be the favorite, but just wanted to get some input!

Thanks guys!
 
I don't know what "best" means?
Of the oils you mentioned M1 is the thickest at operating temp's with a HTHS vis of 2.7cP.
The lightest is the Toyota 0W-20 which shears down to about 2.4cP almost immediately in service and by far it is the lightest oil on start-up that you can buy with it's VI of 214.
The other oils are in the middle.
All will last for your OCI.

Since we know nothing of your application it's impossible to say.
 
Sorry to be vague, basically just want to make sure whatever I use that 8,000 miles is not a stretch for it's additive pack, and one that performs great with minimal wear. Pennzoil has been great to me in my 2008 xB (2.4L) in terms of wear via UOA's, but I am sure almost any oil will.

Maybe I will look into the Toyota 0W20 to use...
 
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Originally Posted By: pbm
It's hard to beat Mobil 1 for $24.50 for the 5 quart jug at WM.

+1 Mobil 1 is easiest to find, and Wally carries Valvoline 0w-20 also, if you prefer. Both are easier to acquire than the Platinum 0w-20.
 
My Walmarts no longer carry the 5QT jugs of 0W20... 0W30 sure, but no 0W20 (only in quart containers).
 
If your Walmart does not carry AFE 0w20, I would ask management to stock it, to at least give it a try. The only other thing I know of is to wait for Edge/Syntec to go on sale (which it is this month at AAP) and buy it then w/ the filter combo. And yes they have 0w20 in both the "Edges" so you can take your pick.

M1 AFE is a good deal but if you like Castrol products you can't beat the oil/filter combo. I have yet to see any others reasonably priced, if I even see them.

You could spring for Amsoil and do extended drains as well.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: pbm
It's hard to beat Mobil 1 for $24.50 for the 5 quart jug at WM.


Up to this week my local WalMart only carried Mobil 1 0W-20 in quart bottles @ now $6.56/qt. Today they have 5 quart jugs of Mobil 1 0W-20 at the $24.50. That's $4.90/qt
smile.gif
thumbsup2.gif
, a great price!

Whimsey
 
Originally Posted By: Whimsey
Up to this week my local WalMart only carried Mobil 1 0W-20 in quart bottles @ now $6.56/qt. Today they have 5 quart jugs of Mobil 1 0W-20 at the $24.50. That's $4.90/qt
smile.gif
thumbsup2.gif
, a great price!
Whimsey


I think the 5 qt jug M1 0w20 used to be $23.50. They raised the price to be even with 0w30 about one month ago.
 
Originally Posted By: CATERHAM
The lightest is the Toyota 0W-20 which shears down to about 2.4cP almost immediately in service...

Where does that information come from? And I'd be curious how it compares to M1 AFE 0w20 in use. (Which used to start out at 2.6 cP and now starts out at 2.7 cP.)

I use Toyota's 0w20 in my Toyota. But M1 0w20 in my Sprint. I like the Toyota oil just fine. But while it is based upon Nippon/Eneos (although now manufactured by XOM) it is made to Toyota's specific specs.

Toyota is thus free to focus on the requirements of Toyota engines. They don't have to worry about the fact that other manufacturers' engines might have special requirements. If certain GM engines, say, have special issues with copper, Toyota doesn't have to care. Mobil and Pennzoil *do* have to care about these things in their general product line.

I don't have any specific information I can point to. But I prefer having a general market oil in my general market car. And reserve the Toyota oil for my Toyota engine.
 
Originally Posted By: xBa380
My Walmarts no longer carry the 5QT jugs of 0W20..

No longer? Or not yet? The 5qt 0w20 jugs are a new thing. They just showed up in my town. But I checked 5 Walmarts in New Mexico last week and they didn't even have shelf-labels for the 0w20 jugs yet.
 
Originally Posted By: Spockian1
Originally Posted By: CATERHAM
The lightest is the Toyota 0W-20 which shears down to about 2.4cP almost immediately in service...

Where does that information come from? And I'd be curious how it compares to M1 AFE 0w20 in use. (Which used to start out at 2.6 cP and now starts out at 2.7 cP.)

I use Toyota's 0w20 in my Toyota. But M1 0w20 in my Sprint. I like the Toyota oil just fine. But while it is based upon Nippon/Eneos (although now manufactured by XOM) it is made to Toyota's specific specs.

Toyota is thus free to focus on the requirements of Toyota engines. They don't have to worry about the fact that other manufacturers' engines might have special requirements. If certain GM engines, say, have special issues with copper, Toyota doesn't have to care. Mobil and Pennzoil *do* have to care about these things in their general product line.

I don't have any specific information I can point to. But I prefer having a general market oil in my general market car. And reserve the Toyota oil for my Toyota engine.

I've used the Toyota 0W-20 and it shears about 10% (oil pressure drop) within the first 150 miles of being in service but then stabilizes. Obviously this is by design. Not saying other 20wts like M1 don't shear, they will but not by design.

Other than that observation, the two other unique characteristics of the Toyota oil (along with the ENEOS you mentioned and the Idemitsu made 0W-20s) is it's ultra high VI (214) plus they contain 800 ppm or so of organic moly.

While the Toyota oil is somewhat lighter at operating temp's to M1, because of it's very much higher VI it is also much lighter at all typical start-up temps. About 25% at room temperature and a whopping 35% at 0C.
It is for these reasons I prefer it to all other OTC 20wt oils.
 
Bear in mind that Mobil 1 0W-20 AFE just had a formulation change - too soon to tell how it will fare. See the thread discussing the forumulation change here .
 
Originally Posted By: Spockian1

No longer? Or not yet? The 5qt 0w20 jugs are a new thing. They just showed up in my town. But I checked 5 Walmarts in New Mexico last week and they didn't even have shelf-labels for the 0w20 jugs yet.


They used to carry them a few years back... I used to buy them before I switched to PP, so it was about two years ago in the green "advanced fuel economy" jug. Then they stop carrying the 0W20 and only have the 0W30. I will have to stop back and see what they got again, as I avoid walmart like the plague for anything but oil.

My brother works at a Toyota dealership at a sales rep, so I am having him check to see what price he can get a case of 0W20 oil for (since my fathers Prius uses the same).
 
Originally Posted By: CATERHAM
I've used the Toyota 0W-20 and it shears about 10% (oil pressure drop) within the first 150 miles of being in service but then stabilizes.

Not to criticize. But a couple of things strike me as limitations of using oil pressure as a measure of oil viscosity.

1. It seems a bit of a crude measurement. ("Crude" as in "rough".)

2. It says more about kinematic viscosity than HT/HS. My understanding is that VII improvers do not manifest (as) much effect under high shear conditions. So if the lubricant package shears 10%, I'd expect a smaller effect on the HT/HS. Which, IMO, is a far more important number than the kinematic viscosities.

There is a very real problem, I think, in the fact that the information which gets published about oils is largely useless or misleading. From KV40 and KV100, we get a number called VI. But is it really useful? To the extent that interpolating between 40C (104F) and 100C (212F) is useful, we're on pretty solid ground.

Less so when we move from interpolation to extrapolation outside of the 40C-100C range. Which is what we almost always want to do.

HT/HS viscosity, at 150C for new oil is generally published. (Except that BP can't be bothered.) And that's nice. But almost no data is available about what happens after it is run a while.

For cold weather operation, some genius decided that what people really want to know is how thick a syrup their oil is at temperatures that almost nobody ever experiences. (-40C/-40F)And either the same, or some other genius decided it would be a great idea to test different oils at different, irrelevant temperatures. (-40, -35, -30...)

Come on. Most of us would like to know how the oil does at maybe -15C. Can we reliably extrapolate from the 40C-100C numbers all the way down to a frigid -15C? Well, trying to do so down to the published -30C to -40C numbers certainly doesn't get us anywhere. It doesn't work at all.

From the popularity of API viscosity classes (XwXX), all the way down to the most detailed numbers that get published, the system seems totally [censored]. And I see no indication that there is any effort at all to fix any of it.

Since real-live tribologists are, presumably, not stupid, I infer that industry insiders have access to much more useful information than the mostly useless statistics that we armchair folks generally get to see.

I vote we go get our pitchforks and storm the castle now. ;-)
 
Originally Posted By: Spockian1
But M1 0w20 in my Sprint.


Really? Unless your cost for M1 is really not significantly different, I would imagine something like PYB in Florida would serve you fine on an older vehicle like that. Unless those 3 bangers were hard on oil?
 
Originally Posted By: Spockian1
Originally Posted By: xBa380
My Walmarts no longer carry the 5QT jugs of 0W20..

No longer? Or not yet? The 5qt 0w20 jugs are a new thing. They just showed up in my town. But I checked 5 Walmarts in New Mexico last week and they didn't even have shelf-labels for the 0w20 jugs yet.


In my area not far from St. Louis there isn't M1 0-20 in the jug either at WM. I was in Gainesville, Fl. last month and they did sell it at WM.
 
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