I've upgraded to 5/30 oil...

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PADave

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Okay, big caveat I’m just some guy. I’m not in the oil industry and I’m not an engineer. I started schooling with as a physics major but switched to computer science. I love math and science and I have a touch of OCD so I get stuck on subjects for a few months then move on to another subject (I’ve been stuck on Oil before). I have a master’s degree which means nothing but I do like researching topics so here’s my opinion after reading a ton on “Bob is the oil guy” then switching to research papers when I found too many differing opinions.

Higher viscosity oil holds up better under stress and temperature. Oil is made up of very small but long molecules if you could see them they would look like a bunch of slippery threads. The threads (molecules) are all bunched up and they are continually breaking and then reattaching. Silly putty is very similar so I can draw analogies to it. As oil is heated up those threads relax and become less entangled and easier to flow across each other. If you heated silly putty you could got it runny too. When the threads are put under stress (like pulling on them) the stress can become so great that they shear or brake. You can do this with silly putty too, if you yank on it really quickly instead of stretching it will break. Shearing isn’t a once and done thing because once the ends of the threads are put back together those threads reattach just like silly putty does and you can stretch them again if you don’t go too fast. I’m saying threads but they are really a long chain of repeating connected smaller molecules that link to each other at the ends and slip on the sides. If you were to mix in a bunch of junk into your silly putty like dirt, soot and gasoline, the more you put it the less your silly putty would behave like silly putty. It would be runnier (is that a word?) and you could pull it apart (shear) easier - the same is true of engine oil.

I’ll now say it again, all other things being equal the higher the viscosity of oil the less shear failures you will get. The reason is that those long molecules (or threads) in the higher viscosity oils are stronger and harder to break that property is related to the viscosity of the oil in fact one of the main the goals of oil manufactures is to get the shear strength as high as possible for a particular viscosity of oil. Further for all oils the viscosity of the oil drops as the oil gets hotter and the viscosity increases as it cools down. This is a bit confusing because the oil grading makes it look like the viscosity increases as it gets hotter but his isn’t what the numbers mean. I have to give some examples here.

0w-20 means that when the oil is cold it acts like 0-weight oil (not 0 viscosity oil at all it’s a grading not a direct measurement of viscosity) normally acts when it is cold and like what 20-weight oil normally acts like when it is hot. 0 weight oil is much thicker cold than 20-weight oil is hot.

5w-30 means that when the oil is cold it acts like 5-weight oil normally acts when it is cold and like what 30 weight oil normally acts like when it is hot. 5-weight oil is much thicker cold than 30-weight oil is hot.

Straight 30 weight oil acts like 30 weight oil normally acts when it is cold and like what 30 weight oil normally acts like when it is hot. 30 weight oil is much thicker cold than 30 weight oil is hot.​

How does this relate to engine wear? Well, if you ran your engine bone dry with no lubricants at all you would have metal on metal contact and these parts are moving really fast against each other. In literally a few minutes (assuming you revved the engine to high RPM) the temperatures would get so high where the metal was rubbing that the metal parts would melt together and then the engine would be destroyed (it could even be dramatic). There are only a couple of things preventing this from happening. The main one is that there is a thin film of oil between the two moving surfaces. The film of oil is constantly flowing in fact I believe that the entire volume of oil in your car is circulated several times a minute. This thin film of oil is what protects the engine because the moving metal parts glide across the surface of the oil and are never able to touch the other metal part. They are kept apart because to touch each other they would have to break through the threads (or shear the molecules apart) and since there is just enough room for a thin sheet of oil between the moving parts and they are moving mostly parallel to each other the oil is able to hold together and not break through. The second and important but less so is the additives added to the oil to reduce wear. There’s tons of research to determine what can be added to oil to protect your engine over and above the protection that the oil gives. Not that the additives just are geared directly at wear. They also increase the low temperature viscosity and increase the high end viscosity, naturalize the soot and gas that get in the oil so that it doesn’t break down the oil and so on.

So why are they trying to lower the viscosity of oil when it’s cold? Well first what’s base stock? The base stock oil is the oil that is used when they start out before any additives are put in. Did you notice there aren’t many 0w-20 conventional oils? That’s because it’s hard to get a good refined low viscosity base stock from crude oil. Sure they can get conventional oils down there but to do that and get one with good properties to meet the standards demanded in the industry is very hard so they are almost all synthetic. Now the reason they want the cold viscosity to be low is that at really cold temperatures the oil gets thick, it can get really thick like silly putty thick it if has high enough cold viscosity and it is cold enough. If it’s too thick it can’t get where it needs to be and can’t do its job. In general AOTBE (all other things being equal) you want the cold viscosity it as thin as possible. You need it at least thin enough that the oil pump will get it to the places it needs to be quickly so the oil can start lubricating the engine as soon as possible. A significant portion of the wear in a maintained car’s engine comes from the friction that happens before the oil has been circulated through the engine. As long as the it’s not too long for the new oil to get to the engine and as long as there is a bit of old oil film and additive lubricants still in the engine then the heat won’t get high enough to do meaningful damage before the oil starts flowing.

So why aren’t all oils made with 0-weight starting viscosities? All other things aren’t equal. To get to zero you have to start with a low viscosity base oil or use additives to push it down. Additives wear down over time and if you can only push the cold viscosity down so far and keep the oil with the good properties you need so there is a limit. In fact to get lower cold and higher highs they start with a higher weight bask stock and the push the hot end up while pushing the cold end down. AOTBE base oils that are pushed in both directions too much have a harder time meeting the modern specifications required of them. 0w-20 doesn’t require much adjusting by additives and does fine but as the spread increasers it requires more and more adjustments from additives. Oils like 0w-40 or 0w-50 don’t stay like that and the oils age in the engines they gravitate towards their true base stocks which may by a 30-weight and a 40-weight respectively.

Let me throw out some numbers off the top of my head. 0-weight (as in 0w-20 or 0w-30) oil at like -50 f is border line. If your car is getting down to -50 f sitting outside overnight where you live you might want to invest in an engine block heater to keep the oil from getting that cold and thick. If the coldest is like -30 f you’re probably good. In 10-weight (cold as in 10w-30) oil at -10 f (I’m guessing) you may be border line and at 20-weight (cold as in 20w-60) you could be border line at +10 f. You can look these numbers up if you are interested in the real numbers it’s pretty easy to find.

AOTBE a higher viscosity (hot as in 40, 50 or 60) will keep the pistons and other moving metal parts from rubbing against each other better than a lower viscosity oil. This is good. If I understand dblshock the OP correctly is one of the primary reasons he changed to a high-quality 30-weight oil and now 40-weight oil. What got me going on this thread and sucked into oils again was that I agreed with him to some degree. Further it’s totally true that there is a lot of pressure on car makers to deliver fuel economy. (Since I’m not an eco-nut (no office to the eco-nuts out there) and I just care about the total cost of ownership and I keep cars until the cost of maintaining them grows larger than the cost of dumping them I would be willing to sacrifice a bit of mileage for to keep a car longer. So far I have never given up a car before it hit 200K miles and it hasn’t been the engine that went out first on any cars so I’m not even sure what the longevity of engines are now days. For me the answer is long enough but I’m not really hard on my cars. Sill I am curious if I did had to keep the engine going as long as possible what would be the best method? Anyway I got sidetracked.) So the proposition that car manufactures are sacrificing a bit of longevity to gain better fuel economy ratings (they can’t test their cars in 0w-5 weight oil and recommend in the manuals for everyone to use 10w-40 weight oil) isn’t hard to imagine. If they are, then those whose cars are put under more extreme stresses will suffer the most because they are the ones who will have shear failures when they stress the oil during hard accelerations, at high temperatures where oil viscosities are lowest and where shear strength is weakest. I believe the OP has stated that on occasion he likes to push his car.

Up till now I don’t “think” there won’t be too much contention over what I have said so let’s dig in to the good part. Are higher viscosity oils better not just AOTBE but always provided that the cold viscosity isn’t an issue and we don’t go crazy with actual silly putty. I think not and here is why. Through my study it has become clear that even with a film protecting the metal parts from touching there is friction and wear between the metal parts, probably not enough to destroy an engine but enough to make a measurable difference and wear the internals. Why do lower viscosity oils give better gas mileage? Simple they reduce friction. It is easier for the engine to push them around. (I wonder of LSPI is correlated to higher viscosities because more microscope droplets are getting past the rings because they can’t be completely moved fast enough I’m not talking about measurable oil consumption here) Friction means heat so they also reduce heat, any fuel that isn’t going into moving the car is going into heat somewhere.

So I don’t think that higher viscosity is always better but I also don’t think that lower viscosity is always better either. If the viscosity gets low enough that when the car put under stress the oil starts shearing then damage will follow and all of the benefits of lower friction will be lost.

So finally the last question is 0w-20 too low too high or just right for the turbo charged 1.5? It appears to me that under even the most extreme stress you can put your car in (stock - if you re-program your ECU to increase compression and remove the limiter all bets are off) the 0w-20 oil is sufficient to prevent shear failure of the oil giving you the best protection. I’m saying that I believe that Honda is confident that there are no conditions where a stock car is capable of shear failure of the recommended oil. Further I saw several (2-3) articles that said they (specifically Honda) are now road test 0w-16 oil that is showing even better wear results than 0w-20 oil. It isn’t ready yet because before it is used widely (and it could be 10 years) a new set of specifications will likely need to be released. But there is a good chance that when it does they will offer it as an option in addition to the current 0w-20 oil. Also it’s clear that there have been changes made in the engines in just the last few years to make oils like 0w-20 the primary oil for the engines. Changes like the size of gaps between piston and cylinder, the size of oil passages in the engine and modifications to the oil pump to increase the flow and adjust the pressure.

In the end I believe that Honda was pushed to lower viscosity oils but found that with relatively minor teaks they could make an engine with better wear and better gas mileage. I also believe that if they could have only got mileage without improved (or at least equal) wear they would have not switched. You can still find engines out there that have higher oil specifications because those cars need them due to the tolerances in their engines and more importantly the types of shearing forces they develop.

I shouldn’t speak for dblshock but I guess he just doesn’t trust Honda or more likely thinks it’s too soon to know for sure. In the end I don’t think it is crazy to up the oil if you are going to push your car but I also think that it will have a very small negative long term impact. How negative… well not enough to scare me from doing it once my car was out of warranty if I was pushing my can and if I was losing sleep over it. I think that there is enough randomness in engines that if dblshock uses 15w-40 in warm weather and NorthenEX-T uses 0w-20 then both get UOAs from the same lab they won’t really tell you what happen in wear due to viscosity (but I’d still like to see them :)

Finally, I don’t have a problem saying here is what I am doing because I am concerned with X, Y and Z. I don’t think that others should be told “I’m going against manufactures recommendations and YOU must too or you will be sorry.” It scares some people into make changes they shouldn’t. For me I’m using the MM and 0w-20 until it hits 250K or so and I’m tired of fixing leaking coolant lines and intermittent electrical problems.

Anyway sorry I’m so long winded. Hope you enjoyed reading if not and you just can’t stand this thread just read another thread.

-Dave
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dblshock

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close, now introduce fuel dilution to the equation.
 
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dblshock

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Weekly reading:

18mi. on the Delvac 1

Honda Civic 10th gen I've upgraded to 5/30 oil... IMG_1084[1].JPG
 


ulieq

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I would say it's dependent on where you live. Los Angeles, go for it no problem. Canada, nty.
 
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dblshock

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How does your Highlander oil look like after 18 miles?
demonstrating the oil is about half way between the marks at 18mi. I suspect it will grow over the next three weeks, stay tuned.

I will send a sample of the recent 5/30 to Polaris lab for UOA with a note concerning fuel, they will measure it accurately.

The new fill of Delvac 1 5/40 is almost in every aspect of engine oil a 100% upgrade to Mobil 1 AFE 0/20 this is one tough hombre, in the all important HTHS test specs out a whopping +40%

Honda Civic 10th gen I've upgraded to 5/30 oil... IMG_1085.JPG
 


PADave

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I will send a sample of the recent 5/30 to Polaris lab for UOA with a note concerning fuel, they will measure it accurately.
Did you smell the used oil? Was there a strong gas odor?
I've done a bit of reading on fuel dilution but I don't see much at all as far as scientific studies with controls go. Normally the oil should stay in grade even with some fuel dilution. But if you get too much it will pull it out of grade.
 

PADave

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I have the 2.0 NA engine and I looked at the dipstick a week ago when the car was at 1500 miles. It was at the top of the orange plastic thing (I like the old all metal ones much better) well above the full mark. That surprised me because I am on the factory fill and I drive 30 miles of 65 to 75 mph interstate each way every day which should be burning (or evaporating) off water and the most volital parts of gas. Since it was my first time looking I don't have a good baseline so I don't know what to really make of it. I wouldn't normally associate fuel dilution with a new car. So I too am interested in the results.
 
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reupped this one as it could have been lost in the shuffle..

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301679X15000432[/QUOTE]

1. Introduction
Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) engines are considered an important source of carbonaceous nanoparticles; they produce higher levels of soot as the process of fuel vaporisation and gas-phase mixing remains essentially incomplete [1], even when early fuel injections are used to enable a homogeneous combustion mode [2] and [3]. This leads to the establishment of sub-stoichiometric mixture-pockets, which are thought to be a significant source of soot formation. Other important mechanisms leading to soot formation have been identified in recent years; primarily, the presence of liquid fuel film over cylinder/piston walls and consequent pool-fire [4] and [5], as well as the process of direct carbonisation of remaining liquid droplets [6]. The phenomenon of soot formation can be essentially described in terms of three steps: nucleation, growth and oxidation [7]. The process occurs under fuel-rich conditions, in both rich premixed and non-premixed flames, where the local equivalent ratio is more than one. The nucleation process takes place under high temperature conditions, between 1000 and 2800 K, with unburned hydrocarbons, in particular acetylene and polycyclic aromatics hydrocarbons (PAH), being pyrolysed and oxidised. The condensation reactions of these gas-phase species lead to the appearance of a large number of primary soot particles with diameter lower than 2 nm and insignificant soot loading. Surface growth, coagulation and aggregation represent the particles growth. During the surface growth, concentric shells on nuclei and spherules are formed by deposition of hydrocarbon intermediate gas-phase species on particles surface. By means of coagulation the particles collide and merge reducing their number concentration, but keeping the total amount of soot constant. After formation, the collision between particles leads to cluster or chain-like soot aggregates (secondary particles) in which the number of particles decreases with a consequent size increase (PM diameter 100–900 nm). In the overall soot formations process, the precursors, the nuclei and particles can be oxidised if in contact with oxidising species such as O2, O, OH, CO2, and H2O at the right conditions. Typically, HRTEM shows the primary particles having an outer shell composed of planar shaped crystallites orientated perpendicular to the radius of the particle. The crystallites are comprised of several PAH layers. An inner core, which is constituted by several fine spherules (3–4 nm in diameter) having a nucleus of 1 nm at the central portion, usually characterises primary particles.

The particle number concentration emitted by GDI engines are generally higher than conventional PFI engines and Diesel engines equipped with Particulate Filter (DPF). Most of the soot produced is expelled from the cylinder with the exhaust gases but a small proportion is transferred from the cylinder to the lubricating oil. Soot is likely to migrate into the oil film early during the expansion stroke [8]; consequently, the morphology, agglomeration and other characteristics of soot-in-oil are likely to be rather different to exhaust soot. Soot-in-oil has not been subject to oxidation processes to the same extent and hence the outer shell structure is more likely to remain intact. Although only a small proportion of the soot formed in the combustion chamber transfers to the engine oil, it contributes to the lubricant degradation. This is certainly a new challenge for the modern GDI engine as soot-in-oil raises concerns upon wear and engine durability...continued w/link...
 
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