Has anyone run a test using 5W30 in place of water? (0W16)
Kinematic Viscosity 5W30 is 10.3 @ 100 degrees C.
Kinematic Viscosity 0W16 is 7.6 @ 100 degrees C.
So about 30% difference.
The new water oils is a conspiracy for two reasons:
Better fuel mileage required to meet the EPA standard.
Wears out your engine much faster, thus you buy a new car.
Has anyone performed an oil analysis to compare how running 5W30 turns out?
And no it will not destroy your engine. Doing 10K Mile oil changes will destroy your engine.
If there is no one brave enough to try this, my next car will be a brand new Camry (in a few years). I will take the risk for this community and run 5W30 as soon as I get home from the dealer. I will document all my oil changes and see how long the engine lasts. By the way I change my oil every 4000 Miles.
As for you keyboard warrior engineers and mechanics that seem to know everything. The smaller oil rings in modern car pistons will still pass 5W30 with ease. Oil pressure is at around 50 PSI it will go through anything.
Independent bodies have been testing thin oils for decades and there’s no evidence of excessive wear compared to heavier oils. Chemical composition and age of the oil are the actual factors you need to worry about.
From a practical perspective 0W-20 has been common in cars for well over a decade and 0W-16 was not too far behind. Given that owners are notoriously poor with maintenance, if these oils were causing excessive wear and actual damage we would have heard about it a long time ago. There are 0W-16 Civics and Corollas out there with hundreds of thousands of miles on them.
Of course there are specialized use cases where it might make sense to swap out your oil for something thicker. Track use is one application that comes to mind. However, they’re doing it for thermal management during extended WOT conditions and not due to viscosity.
Of course, the cargo cult idiots always believe that it’s a 1-to-1 analog; if something works on a track car then doing the same on a road car means it will run forever. These people ignore the fact that race cars require constant maintenance and frequent oil changes. Racing is about stable performance over the course of an event, not long term reliability. They’re not worried about potential issues from running thicker oils because they have a specific need that justifies the compromise.