Quote:
Originally Posted by wwkayaker
Can someone explain the pros and cons of using this oil in a car that the manufacturer recommends 10W30? What kind of gain could be expected? What possible complications, malfunctions, or damage could occur? BTW, I am currently using Mobil1 10W30 and saw a 5 mpg increase. I replace my oil every 6,000 to 10,000 miles (mostly interstate).
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complications are more numerous going from 10w to 0w. the first and most annoying one will likely be it will leak all over the place for a substantial amount of time unless you replace all the seals. The seals respond to the oil and seat with it, so if you all of a sudden switch it can leak through the seals(this happened/happens to me).
Other problems might arise if the oil is too light for your engine. I kind of doubt that would be a problem but it would be much easier to "burn up" a 0w pan than a 10w. By burn up I mean starting the car and almost immediately going to redline, it doesn't give the oil time to get up to the 30 weight of heavy duty/performance operating temperature. That said unless you have a turbo or a supercharger this is somewhat hard to do because most cars don't have the kind of HP to get to redline before the oil gets warm(in between 0-30 weight but not hot(30W)). You of course could if you jumped in your car and stopped the accelerator in first gear, but I don't really know anyone who does this. Usually people stomp the accelerator but shift before it gets above ~3400 and do that until they are out of gears and then let it go above 4K rpm where the danger exists for the engine oil.
Your transmission on the other hand won't have this luxury, but you aren't asking about changing that. It is more susceptible because its likely to still be cold when you start shifting hard and even when you get up to speed and may not protect the gears properly.