Amsoil 5W40 Euro, 8300 miles, 09 Mazdaspeed3

[JohnVitamvas]

Guys - this engine has produced a lot of iron since new, but the lead coming up is a new phenomenon. Thoughts? This is my wife's daily driver. Mixed city / highway driving, but no particularly hard use.

You can see where I switched from 5W30 Amsoil to 5W40 Amsoil. I did this because the engine seems to really shear the oil down. I don't think this would cause extra bearing wear though?

Code:


Mi/Hr on oil 8300 7300 8300 8100 7594 8000

Mi/Hr on unit 73875 65200 58283 50000 41930 34400



Aluminum 3 4 4 3 3 2

Chromium 1 0 1 1 1 0

Iron 42 24 29 30 29 20

Copper 1 1 2 1 1 2

Lead 12 1 2 2 1 1

Tin 0 1 0 0 1 0

Molybdenum 3 12 65 38 34 33

Nickel 1 0 0 0 0 0

Potassium 1 2 1 0 0 2

Boron 50 44 48 128 150 89

Silicon 6 5 13 8 8 9

Sodium 4 6 4 4 3 3

Calcium 1855 1780 2426 2492 2586 2101

Magnesium 10 9 11 12 11 7

Phosphorus 760 660 693 672 663 593

Zinc 853 810 809 834 809 679



Sus Visc@210F 62.2 61.8 53.4 52.0 52.2 50.1

cSt Visc@100C 10.83 10.72 8.31 7.87 7.93 7.30

Flashpoint(F) 385 365 365 350 350 360

Fuel%
Insolubles 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.5 0.4 0.3

 

[Texan4Life]

I wouldn't worry to much unless it starts trending.

What oil filter(s) have you been using? noticed your insolubles are kinda up and down.

 

[aquariuscsm]

What I notice from your UOA`s is that iron and lead wear metals have steadily been going up. I`d try a different oil and see what happens.

 

[PZR2874]

Why are you waiting so long between OCI's?

 

[buster]

Amsoil 5w40 Euro loses it's viscosity quite often. It's down to a mid 30 grade, but all prior UOA's lost visocisty as well. Seems to be common with this engine.

 

[tstep]

would moly levels below a certain threshold allow some additional wearing (short term or continual) to occur that may not have occured while moly was present?

 

[JohnVitamvas]

I probably am waiting too long between changes - I guess it was never an issue with our old Jetta 1.8T (ran 10,000 mile Amsoil intervals on that car and every report was pristine). I have enough Amsoil for another change so I'll go 6k on this one, do another fill and see what the results are.

I have used exclusively Wix filters on this engine. It's a very small filter - maybe that's something to consider upgrading on the car.

 

[buster]

I'd look for an oil with no/little VM'ers.

 

[JohnVitamvas]

Sorry, but what are VM'ers?

 

[Indydriver]

Where are the fuel % #s?

 

[buster]

Originally Posted By: buster
I'd look for an oil with no/little VM'ers.


Viscosity modifiers. With engines that are prone to some fuel dilution, which lowers the viscosity, it can sometiems be helpful to use an oil with no viscosity modifiers.

 

[JohnVitamvas]

Originally Posted By: Indydriver
Where are the fuel % #s?


At the bottom of the table.

Buster, thanks for the answer. What oils have low VMs?

 

[ARCOgraphite]

That would be amsoil ATM 10w30 which can the most shear-stable PCMO grade. I havent seen the "visible" additisation fingerprint on this product lately. Fuel in oil with E10 can gum up filter media and you'll be running on bypass too often. A 1 mil( 25micron particle will shed bearings. I didnt think they still used babbit coating everywhere in perfomance engines, though.

 

[Norm Olt]

AMSOIL's recommendation is a 5W-30: why not give their HDD a try? If it works in a turbo'ed diesel it might well work for you...

Cheers!

 

[surfstar]

As there's a chance I'll be buying an '07-09 Mazdaspeed3, the bit of reading I did, definitely pointed to shorter OCIs for the fuel dilution and one member settled on Redline 5w30 for a 'best' choice option on this motor.
Awesome car BTW. Test drove one last weekend - would never buy that one as the recent mpg avg was 14 from all the test drives!

 

[PZR2874]

Try to stick to 3000-3500 even on Syn. IMHO

3000 OCI's have been serving me fine. The fuel is an issue on these cars... Specifically without an OCC or EGR delete. But that's another story.

 

[PZR2874]

She doesn't drive it hard it seems.

 

[JohnVitamvas]

Not a correct assumption

 

[PZR2874]

LOL.... My apologies. Figured if 7-8K intervals were being done, it would have been babied.

 

[JohnVitamvas]

Well, it gets a lot of freeway miles. She puts 24-26k on it a year. But it has an intake on it, and she likes the boost.