Originally Posted By: oliverr871
Very true, I feel in the USA there is a lot of mis-information going around, and that even though people use 5w30, it is not approved by BMW for extended interval use, so they use that oil plus change it whenever the car tells them to, which results to a dirty engine.
There's a huge amount of mis-information in brand-specific auto forums. Each one seems to develop a favourite of its own, be it Royal Purple, GTX, Mobil1, whatever. Of course this competes with the auto knowledge passed down from their grandfathers who used ATF for just about everything except inside automatic transmissions.
[ as an aside, back in their grandfathers' day there may have been something to the use of ATF for all kinds of things. Back then weren't the friction modifiers made from sperm whale oil or something, which was very high in natural esters? Now it's all different and doesn't work the same magic. ]
Then when someone comes along and says "use whatever you want that's ACEA A3" they poke fun at you and continually quote "ACEA A3" like it's some kind of made up term. Look at the back of the bottle, guys.
OK, rant done