At what mileage should you change your oil viscosity????

[igdlt]

You know that when vehicles are new the manufacturers specifications for the oil are on the low nubers(exp 10w30) I was wondering at what amount of mileage should you change the viscosity of the oil?

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[johnzcarz]

The oil viscosity recommendations are for the life of the car, there isn’t a certain mileage that you need to change over to something thicker. I have heard advice that if an engine has slight bearing noise then increasing the viscosity (from 10w-30 to 10w-40) may quiet things down but that’s a Band-Aid at best, the problem is still there.

[slicksps]

What John says. I’ve seen some oils in the UK marketed as ‘for older engines’ but I think that’s more like “It’s gonna die soon anyway so this cheap stuff can’t hurt”

[college man]

The oil weight and viscosity is whatever is recommended by the car manufacturer from day one and until it dies.C8-)

[igdlt]

@ johnzcarz i have heard that same advice but a little different. I heard that you should change the viscosity of your oil when your car has a large amount of miles and your internals have more wear. And changing the viscosity will better lubricate

[cliorider]

Hi , the way i have heard it is like this
if your engine starts consuming oil 5-30w (thin oil)
say because of worn piston rings …change to 10-40 20-50w (thicker oil) in order to burn less oil
as it will not seep through the same cracks as easy .
having worse lubrication

again it ‘s a band aid…..

[3SheetsDiesel]

I’ve owned one car where I needed to run a different viscosity oil than what the manufacturer recommended. It was a 2000 Mercury Grand Marquis with the 4.6 SOHC engine. The oil pump was starting to wear out, not surprising for about 200,000 miles, but the oil light would come on at idle until the engine warmed up. As I was running a 5w20 oil in it, as per Ford’s recommendations, I switched to a 20w50, since I wasn’t planning on keeping the car too much longer and just wanted the oil light to stop coming on. It seemed to work for a while, but then the transmission started to go out, and when the steel brake line popped right near the gas tank due to rust, I just donated the car to my local fire department for them to set on fire to practice putting out cars.

Other than that one car, I’ve always just run whatever oil weight the manufacturer recommended.

Also, a word on what the viscosity numbers mean. 5w30 means that when the oil is cold, it will flow like a 5 weight oil. At operating temperature, it will flow like a 30 weight oil.

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