With the new 5w-20 oils has anyone tried these in our engines or experimented vs the 5w-30 recommended?


I am asking because 5w-20 was not around this much back then in the 80s.


I have been using mobil1 0w-30 or 5w-30 currently and my engine runs fine.

 

tried mobil one synthetic 5w-20 a couple of oil changes back, oil pressure is a bit on the low side due to our engines having large clearances, with 10w-30 my oil pressure is usually near 45-60 psi when driving, and about 25-30 psi when idling, with 5w-20 it dropped to about 30-40psi while driving and around 15-20psi when idling. these oils are better suited for newer engines which have much tighter clearances then the old small blocks ever did, its best to just use 10w-30, unless you live in a cold environment in which case 0w-30 or 5w-30 work better

 

I don't know whats best for others but whats best for me is the Mobil 1 Extended Performance 5w-30. That's what I have been running for the last 6 years.
I'm editing this reply to say I have recently switched to the Mobil 1 Extended Performance oil filter #M1-111
Link to the filter = http://www.mobiloil.com/usa-english/...l_filters.aspx

 

Royal Purple.

 

Yes that's liquid gold I use that in my daily driver.

 

I used to only run mobil 1 10w-30 synthetic, but we had a guy come into the shop and he showed us a demo for an oil additve, stuff called Power Up, but anyways he had a a contraption that would apply pressure to a spinning metal disk( representative of a bearing surface) and tried all popular oils (royal purple, mobil 1, ford blend, valvoline, etc.) and he was showing how much pressure it took to seize the bearing, well mobil 1 only took like 5 discs (If I remember correctly it equated to like 500psi of pressure) while royal purple and the additive Power Up both took over 20 discs to seize it(over 2000psi before breakdown), so I've run RP 5w-30 since then (10w-30 is a bit on the thicker side I've heard)

 

Sounds like a good sales pitch but my engine has almost 200000 miles and camaro has 247000 and runs like new. I used to run other brands castrol used to be my favorite despite its reputation. I really like redlineoil best but that is expensive. That demo only sounds represenitive of how much ep additives the oil has.

I work on cars in the shop all day and almost any top name brand synthetic is good in real life. Despite that engines have oil pressure regulators and pumps and are built on oil flow not pressure but you still need pressure to a point then the oil pressure relief valve kicks on to bypass oil. Our 800hp racecar experince has taught us ep additives in oil not to be good. Viscosity is consistant in a warm engine anyway because there regulated by fan and thermostat at 200 degrees. Silly 4 ball wear test are not representive of something spinning, if you have metal rubbing that bad in oyur engien then you have major wear, wrong clearences or a broken piece of motor rubbing inside the engine. Oil passages, pumps make the most difference. Clearences on chevy v8 are pretty tight but the oil setup is different. Flow cools and pressure is relitive to whatever in whatever engien your looking at is holding back the oil not good. Diff engines use diff pressures some low but higher oil flow.

 

...Motor oil....is motor oil. On today's shelves....the only huge difference is synthetic vs your traditional motor oil.
Synthetic doesn't break down as fast, but tbh, there's no need to go with anything other than regular motor oil.

If you want to get technical, the API rating is what determines what oil is. Believe it or not, there are some engines you can't use certain API ratings in. API ratings are ALWAYS listed on the back/front of motor oil bottles.
http://www.upmpg.com/motor_oil_rate_gas.htm

Get w/e is on sale at the autoparts store so long as it's not the generic stuff.

 

^This guy "Gets it". Except that even "The generic stuff" is good enough if it has the proper API rating. To wit; I ran my first TA to 245,000 miles using "Cumberland Farms XP Lube" engine oil. $.99/qt. I sold the car still running great and I beat the hell out of that thing -even towed an 18' boat with it...a lot. Any proper API oil is more than good enough.

As for oil pressure a few bits of misinformation in this thread already;
1. a SBC only requires 10 PSI/1000 RPM.
2. Oil pump should only push oil over the pressure relief valve in extreme situations, such as when the oil is cold, thick and your'e getting way too much pressure. The pressure relief valve DOES NOT "set" the oil pressure under normal operating conditions; the flow volume, oil viscosity, and bearing clearances (resistance to flow) are what set the oil pressure, which is why youre pressure fluctuates with RPM.