Oil question for worn rings and winter coming up....

[jimdigs]

I'm using 5W 30 right now but should I change with the knowledge that my rings are bad and winter coming up? Any input will be appreciated. Thanks, Jim

[cburkett65]

I don't know why you would want to run a heavier weight oil in the winter. If you were already using then I could understand.

[Movin]

0w40 or 0w50 if you are burning oil and you have already treated the rings to clean and remove carbon. If you have excessive blow by with clean rings stp or something similar may help both conditions but you should use some type of engine heater when it is cold. Really though, nothing puts a smile on your face like rebuilding your engine !!

[TorqueEffect]

I still firmly believe that you DON'T screw with different weights of oils. The engineers know more than us about what weight oils to use in an engine.

Because you are just going to cause that engine to wear faster with improper weighted oil, granted the engine is already really worn.

[blkfordsedan]

Stick with 5W-30. You could also go with 0W-30 or 0W-40. The number in front of the "W" indicates the cold start viscosity. You want to stay with a 5 or even a 0 to get the best flow at cold start up. The number after the dash correlates to the relative viscosity at operating temp. Winter really makes no difference, since the engine is at operating temp. Back when oil was straight weight, we needed to change from a thicker summer grade to a thinner grade for winter. This was only to get adequate flow at cold start. If you had a pan full of straight SAE40 and the temp dropped down to 0*F you were screwed....so you changed to SAE10 for the winter. Now we have multi-viscosity oils (ie. 5W-30)....so we don't have to change oil viscosity for the seasons. 30 is ideal for pretty much every IC engine, but you can increase it if the engine is worn in order to maintain proper oil pressure, which is dictated by bearing clearances. Max oil flow at adequate pressure is the key to lubrication. Ideally, you want to run the thinnest oil you can that still provides adequate pressure. the few B series engines I've torn down all showed little to no wear on the crank and mains, even with high miles, so I'm not sure I would run a 50 weight oil arbitrarily. That said, if the rings are worn and you have blow-by and oil burning issues, I would shy away from a full synthetic oil and stick with a synthetic blend like Motorcraft or Valvoline. A "high mileage" synthetic blend in 5W-30 would be my personal choice.

[jimdigs]

Well I kept with the 5W-30 and added a little of "engine restorer" that I had left from my last oil change. Thanks for all the input.