Viscosity difference by country (UK-USA)

[aquariuscsm]

Originally Posted By: wemay
Originally Posted By: aquariuscsm
Originally Posted By: Merkava_4
Yes and I find it baffling how many people are afraid of 30 weight oil.


I agree! I think it`s funny when someone asks something like,"How would PYB 10W30 work for me?" And someone says,"Why so thick??" They`d have a cow if they saw my stash of 20W50

To be fair, it's also funny when people doubt their Owner's Manual recommendation, concluding the viscosity is too thin because of internet anecdotes, blaming CAFE for all the world's evils.


My owner's manual and FSM spec 20W50 and recommend it.

 

[fdcg27]

Actually, Ireland as well as all parts of the UK are nothing like as cold during the winter as are the northern tier of American states.
So, yes, Ireland is much warmer duirng the winter than is much of the US and Hyundai, along with almost every other manufacturer these days does not recommended different grades for the different seasons.
It's one size fits all.

 

[wemay]

Originally Posted By: aquariuscsm


My owner's manual and FSM spec 20W50 and recommend it.


touché

 

[fdcg27]

I own an old BMW of about the same vintage as your old ZX. The BMW OM also recommends a 20W-50 for summer use. I use a 10W-40 syn blend instead.
I've also put 45K on the car over the last five summers and have posted one very clean UOA using Maxlife Nextgen 10W-40.
Oils are a lot better than they were twenty years ago, particularly wrt shearing. I also don't run OCIs anything like as long as the BMW MM would allow, and I know that you don't run the oil as long as Nissan would allow for your ZX either.
Grades that made some sense a couple of decades ago may no longer be necessary.
Why subject an oil pump drive to having to pump a 20W-50 when a modern 10W-40 is perfectly adequate to the application?
A thicker oil is not a better oil, nor does it provide more wear protection.

 

[artificialist]

My car also has an interesting statement:
USA: 5w30 year round, 10w30 optional if temperatures don't drop below 95F. Below 32F, 0w30 and 0w40 are recommended.
Out of curiosity, I looked at Motul's European website, and it said 0w40 year round.

That information led me to decide to stop using 10w30 syn, and use 0w40 syn.

As for 20w50 being common in the UK many years ago while 10w30 and 10w40 were more common in the USA, I think someone mentioned the old Mini. It was said that 20w50 was better for engines that share the sump with the transmission. The Mini was common in the UK, and uncommon in the USA, and that might explain the situation. I don't know if any of this makes sense or not...

 

[cookiemonster]

Thicker is better.

 

[CATERHAM]

Originally Posted By: artificialist
My car also has an interesting statement:
USA: 5w30 year round, 10w30 optional if temperatures don't drop below 95F. Below 32F, 0w30 and 0w40 are recommended.
Out of curiosity, I looked at Motul's European website, and it said 0w40 year round.

That information led me to decide to stop using 10w30 syn, and use 0w40 syn.
.

Short of figuring it out for yourself using oil gauges, to optimize the viscosity the best advice is to use the lightest oil specified particularly for a street use only vehicle.
In this case that would be a typically light A5/B5 5W-30.

 

[BrianC]

Check out this link: You can compare performance levels of various specs: seems API & ILSAC doesn't do so well in the grand scheme of engine wear and lonegevity. It would appear that ILSAC is all about Fuel Mileage and little about wear. DEXOS1 seems to catch up to a degree. DEXOS is under GM Opel. I'm just expressing my view IMHO.

http://origin-qps.onstreammedia.com/orig...p/pc/index.html