fad2blk99
1/2 ton status
I gotta side w/ Tim on the oil issue....
If you actually read your owners manual it cautions against running heavier oils. My T/A's manual even goes as far as giving you a temperature comparison between the recommended 5w-30 and heavier oils to convince you not to run the heavier stuff. Let’s just say if you reach the temp range where 5w-30 breaks down you would be SOL no matter what oil you were running. Heavier oils, however, take longer to reach components at start up due to its higher viscosity (defined by Webster as a fluids ability to resist flow). Creating resistance in your oil flow is probably not the way to go. Heavier oils do take longer to drain back to the oil pan, but they DO eventually drain back to the oil pan. And that couple seconds of delay it takes for your motor to pump that cold, thick 20w-50 or even 10w-40 is brutal.
Having said all that I used to tell everyone to run heavy oil as that’s what I was advised on many occasions. But after reading up and listing to some of the pros on this topic, no more heavy oil for me. I’d rather have a few subtle leaks or a little blow by (as long as it doesn’t smoke) then not have good oil circulation at start up.
If you want another reason to run thinner oil, look to the aviation industry. Multi-million dollar gas turbine engines (which reach temps exponentially higher than any reciprocal internal combustion engine) run extremely thin synthetic oil (like Mobil Jet II or Mil spec equivalent) with viscosity far less than 5w-30. Billions of dollars in research can’t be wrong. /forums/images/graemlins/deal.gif
If you actually read your owners manual it cautions against running heavier oils. My T/A's manual even goes as far as giving you a temperature comparison between the recommended 5w-30 and heavier oils to convince you not to run the heavier stuff. Let’s just say if you reach the temp range where 5w-30 breaks down you would be SOL no matter what oil you were running. Heavier oils, however, take longer to reach components at start up due to its higher viscosity (defined by Webster as a fluids ability to resist flow). Creating resistance in your oil flow is probably not the way to go. Heavier oils do take longer to drain back to the oil pan, but they DO eventually drain back to the oil pan. And that couple seconds of delay it takes for your motor to pump that cold, thick 20w-50 or even 10w-40 is brutal.
Having said all that I used to tell everyone to run heavy oil as that’s what I was advised on many occasions. But after reading up and listing to some of the pros on this topic, no more heavy oil for me. I’d rather have a few subtle leaks or a little blow by (as long as it doesn’t smoke) then not have good oil circulation at start up.
If you want another reason to run thinner oil, look to the aviation industry. Multi-million dollar gas turbine engines (which reach temps exponentially higher than any reciprocal internal combustion engine) run extremely thin synthetic oil (like Mobil Jet II or Mil spec equivalent) with viscosity far less than 5w-30. Billions of dollars in research can’t be wrong. /forums/images/graemlins/deal.gif