Car eats oil - oil change interval?

Yes it will.

OK so he shouldn't get carried away and use pure STP or pure MotorHoney or axle grease in his crankcase. 10-40 is not so thick it won't flow thru the oil passages. The oil temps in an engine are higher in summer than winter that affects the viscosity of the oil. When the engine reaches a point where it is worn enough it is a good idea to compensate for that loss of viscosity in hot weather.

-jim

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Sounds like he is driving a worn out piece of s*it, Ed. No oil analysis will fix this.

He can try heavier API oils, and if it works fine.

He can also junk this POS or invest in an engine transplant.

Or he can buy a bicycle...or some Dr. Marteens...

Try an oil change using Delo 15w40. I have had tremendous luck in burners with this stuff. HTH Ben

eh?

I agree than 10W40 will not cause oil flow problems. However, it probably won't fix his problem either.

As for the oil temperature - as long as your cooling system is in good shape, the "hot" oil temperature varies a lot less than you would think from summer to winter. The temperature of the oil actually varies a lot more with continuous engine load than without outside temperature. Towing or high speed driving in New York in the winter will heat up the oil a lot more than driving the car unloaded in the Arizona desert in the summer (assuming your cooling system is in good shape). One of my Audis had an oil temperature gauge. I used to be amazed at high steady it was most of the time. However, if you drove for a few miles at WOT, the oil temperature just kept climbing. I wonder how they got away with this in Germany where people can drive for miles on the autobahn at WOT. After looking into this, I found that in Germany the car had an auxiliary oil cooler. I guess Audi felt this wasn't needed for the US since we had relatively low speed limits. And I guess they were right since most of the time the oil temperature varied very little once the car warmed up.

Ed

Which of those words do you not comprehend?

The OP reported that the increased oil consumption was due to running the engine low on oil. The particular type of damage that occurs under those circumstances and considering that his oil consumption is around 1 qt. every 350 miles is likely to be small scratches in the cylinder walls, pistons, crank-bearings and bearing journals. Those scratches are the main cause of the oil consumption. Aside from the minor scratches everything else in the engine could well be pretty tight and in good shape. Using 10-40 instead of 10-30 may reduce his oil consumption and extend the life of the engine far into the future.

-jim

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What problem is that?

You mean like you think no one has ever felt an oil pan in summer and winter?

Why is there something wrong with your cooling system. You just said in the previous paragraph that the oil stays the same temp if your cooling system is working. The reality is there is a lot of surface area like oil pan and valve covers that shed a lot more heat when it is 20 below than when it is 100F. That means all else being equal the oil will run cooler when its 20 below.

One of my Audis had an oil temperature gauge. I used to be

Yeah well I thought the discussion was about the OP's engine not yours.

He shouldn't use 10-40 in the winter because it will make the engine easier to start if he uses 10-30 and lives where it gets cold. If he lives in Hawaii then he can use 10-40 all year. He said he does only city driving so there is no need to bring the Arizona desert or towing or the autobahn into it.

If 10-30w is the recommended oil for his engine then previously (before he had his little accident with running it out of oil) the pressure regulator is what maintained oil pressure. Now, it is likely that when the oil is hot (like on a hot summer day) the oil pressure is not as high as it used to be and may fall below the limit set by the pressure regulator.

-jim

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Back in 1971, I was in Atlanta.I was looking around in the Atlanta Underground.I saw an ad in a freebie handout newspaper about a guy in Lawrenceville, he had a 1957 Ford Thunderbird car for sale.At the time, I owned a 1968 Ford Mustang car.I traded my car plus $350.00 for the T Bird car.About every nienty miles, I had to stop and add a quart of oil to the T Bird.That T Bird car was slap worn out.The exaust leaked so bad I didn't dare drive with the windows up, a bunch of things.When I got back home with my T Bird car, a front end lineup shop had to put in no telling how many shims to get the front end reasonably lined up.

Later on, I saw an ad in Hemmings Motor News magazine about a 1931 Model A four door car for sale in Sublette,Kansas.I put a hitch on my T Bird car and an old buddy went with me to Sublette.I paid $700.00 for the

One time, one evening when I was mowing my front yard, a guy from Indiana stopped and he asked me, How much do you want for that car? (my old T Bird) I sold the T Bird to him for $2,000.His pretty peroxide blonde wife wanted the T Bird. cuhulin

Eats oil? Is it chewey?

You should change it more often, while its still thin enough to drink.

I don't see why the flash point would matter since any oil that finds it's way into the combustion chamber will be burned. I had always assumed that the conventional wisdom was that viscosity oil would resist being sucked into the chamber as readily which would reduce oil consumption.

Heavier oil does get consumed more slowly by worn engines, within limits. The upper number isn't as important as the cold viscosity, though; 15W-whatever will work better than 10W-40. For the same reason, there is little advantage in going from 10W-40 to 10W-30 for Winter, because it's the starting viscosity that matters most in cold weather.

You obviously have never poured 10-40 and 10-30 when it is -20F outside. If you had you would have noticed that there is a significant visible difference in viscosity no matter what the API might say. At that temperature, it makes a noticeable difference in engine cranking also.

-jim

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I shouldn't have used that example, because the wider the spread in viscosity, the more likely you are to find the oil behaving wrong, especially with non-synthetics. I never use oil with a 30 weight 'spread' anymore. 10W-30 seems to be just fine for Summer driving, so

That's simply not true.

Why because you read it in a book?

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:-)

No, because that's basically the DEFINITION of the API rating. If there's a huge difference in cold pour characteristics, then the oil really isn't meeting its API rating. Which, to be fair, is entirely possible especially for bargain oils, and high viscosity spread oils.

So the answer is yes you just read about it. You didn't read very well. The cold pour rating is not for -20F. When it is -20 there is a noticeable difference.

-jim

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Ask the manufacturer for a plot of viscosity versus temperature.

The various API ratings require the viscosity to be in a certain range over a certain temperature range. But once you exceed the rated temperature range, all bets are off.

If you buy an API SL grade oil marked "10W-30", you know according to the standard that it will be a 10 weight (7Pa) oil at -25'C and that it will be a 30 weight (2.9mPa) oil at 150C. But you have no idea what the oil is going to do outside of those two points. And when things get really cold and really hot, the viscosity improvers get weird sometimes.

--scott

Its actually pretty close to -20F, as a matter of fact. Something like

-15F, -12F. Not far off, certainly no more than 8-10 degrees F. If you'd said they differed a lot at -40F, then it might have been a more believable statement. For sufficiently cheap and crappy oils.