Havoline 5w-20 for winter in my honda

[ruking77]

I deduce from your post that the batch of green GC is other than 5w20.

Since it is a Honda engine in a Saturn Vue, you might want to check your owner's manual, tech data and/or web sites and I am almost positive 5w20 is the oil recommendation.

If so, you can not go wrong with Havoline 5w20. It is one of the better conventional oils. There are app 10 others that are very competitive. However with your drain interval of 5,500, I would buy any of those on price. I would use 5w20 year around, if indeed your technical data says 5w20 is the recommendation.

 

[burnout]

Yup, 5w-20 IS recommended. From a recent UOA on my last run of GC, blackstone recommended doing 8,000mi drain intervals with the 0w-30 GC. I would have done it this time, but I drained it early for a few reasons.

1: I was bored, and I love changing oil.
2: There were a lot of short trips on this oil, and also a lot of long trips with MANY WOT situations.
3: There was moisture on the inside of my oil cap.

I decided on havoline because I know that it performs just as well as most synthetic oils out there. Also, I've read on here that the 5w-20 may perform better than the 0w-30 in certain cold situations. After my GC has run out, I might not even use synthetic in this car anymore.

In the spring I plan on doing a few track days with the vue at the local 1/8th mile strip. This is when the synthetic will be going back in. However, do you think that for a 5000 mile interval on havoline, when driven hard (and properly warmed up), it is still safe to run? From what I've seen on here I don't even need to worry that it is a 5w-20. Basically my question is, if I race the car occasionally and still use the oil life monitor, should I move up to a 30 weight or stay with the 20? I have faith that the 5w-20 will hold up well in any situation.

EDIT: My oil life monitor came on last time at almost exactly 5000 miles. I'm thinking that it is the lowest that the light will ever come on, because of the way I drove the car. If I go easier on the oil, hopefully the light will come on even later, and I doubt I'd have to worry about it being dino oil. The light was designed for dino oil anyway!

 

[ruking77]

You have hit the high points in the OLM and the issues. I personally would have no qualms running 10,000 mile OCI's (I do on a Honda Civic) with one of the 5w20 conventional oils. I did the break in on Honda oem 5w20 (made to Honda specs by ExxonMobil) If I were to stay with conventional oil I would use ExxonMobil Superflo 5w20.

I personally would hesitate to comment on track and the intergration to normal driving. Since I have a Z06 Corvette and do a lot of reading as to what is done on a normal basis for track procedures. I do not track mine and incidently do 15,000 OCI's with OEM recommended Mobil One 5w30.

So now the real issue is does the Blackstone oil analysis match up with the OLM both on conventional oil and stuff like green GC. and vice versa. Your analysis with the green GC is for 8k miles. As you noted there is a 3k difference in indication between real analysis and the OLM. So WHY is the real issue?

So for example, I would in addition have no qualms in running 20,000 OCI's with Mobil One 0w20.5w20. Id be leery (without oil analysis) of doing much pass 10,000 on the ExxonMobil Superflo.

 

[burnout]

Engine: 3.5L honda (saturn vue)

I had about 5500 miles on a batch of Green GC, and yesterday I decided to drain it. Figured I'd try the havoline 5w-20 for winter, and run it as long as the OLM lets me. I'm using a PureOne filter.

The pros are that I might see a tad bit better gas mileage. Are there any cons? I've read that a 5w-20 might actually be thinner than the 0w-30 to a certain extent.

 

[buster]

One of the BEST oils you can buy right now. Run it and be done with it.

 

[burnout]

I do know that at 8,000 miles on the GC, I still had a couple more thousand left. I believe the OLM came on mainly just because it is programmed to think there is non synthetic oil in the crankcase.

 

[pbm]

Ruking77; I'm curious about how often you change your oil filter when doing 10K and 20K OCI's?