Hex, you got me
I was being lazy. When I saw the huge leak, I was sure it had to be something bad so I got lazy. After I posted, I snapped out of laziness, raised the front, stuck my head further and saw the old filter gasket still there. Phew!
I checked the fluid, it was fine. I suspected to be overfilled because I usually buy 1 gallon and pour until I have a little left over. . Did the same with the 1.25gal so I really didn’t add too much. I tend to exaggerate a little when writing about car issues.
4.2qts would be a complete engine overhaul. I was going for the 3.8qts with oil filter
Dancam, can you explain how 15w40 it is bad for the engine? I run Rotella T 15w40 in all my engines; Ranger, Civic, CBR f4i, 400ex, dr350 and KTM 250exc 2 stroke gear lube. Clutch work perfectly and upped the pressure a little for my ol’ CJ7. The Civic has RMS leak that was significantly reduced in the winter (only had this car since July 2015) so I am using the old thicker oil to slow the leak trick year round. I haven’t had to add since cold weather hit.
well there is a lot of info about why its worse, i cant type it all so i will provide some links and some basic info. I presumed you have a stock motor, if you build a motor, or change certain components then different viscosities can be appropriate. a decent read for starters is here:
http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/motor-oil-101/
make sure to read all of it, its a couple pages, not just the first page i linked.
in an engine with no mechanical problems running the way it was intended the vast majority or even 99% of all the wear occurs at startup. thicker oil takes way longer to flow freely to and through the bearings. just because you have 100psi with thicker oil doesnt mean you have any flow through your bearings or through that oil control orface going to the head. your pressure gauge outlet is in the piping before the bearings and before the oil control orface. all the oil going to the valvetrain has to go through a small oil control hole first, it fills slow with thick oil in the cold. you could in theory have zero oil going to the head and zero oil making it through the bearings and still have 100psi. the valvetrain needs some pressure, the mains and big ends can draw in sufficient oil from 20 psi on a diesel engine to maintain the hydrodynamic wedge at its redline of 3600rpm under high load. (i lost the link to that study) but the piston cooling jets or however the wrist pin and rings get lubricated needs a bit more pressure, as does the valvetrain. but, going through those thin passages to the wrist pin, pcj's or hla's thick oil reduces flow and reduces lubrication when cold. Thick, cold oil cannot fill the hydrodynamic wedge fast enough at high rpm's, doesnt matter that you have 100psi, it still isnt flowing as well as thinner oil at 40psi.
If your using thick oil to stop a seal from leaking your creating a problem by not fixing another.
thicker oil increases pumping losses, piston and bearing drag, heats up more going through the bearings because it has to be sheared more to fit, reduced flow reduces the cooling the oil does...
here is a copy paste bit from some other places:
The only reason 10w30 used to be recommended is 5w30 would shear twice as fast as 10w30, but its not so much of an issue anymore. I buy the cheapest oil i can find so i still do 10 in the summer since its probably the worst oil you can get.
There are good reasons to use heavier oil. They are if you are running the oil a lot hotter than it was intended (because it ends up being the same viscosity), if you have increased the horsepower very very significantly (like triple or more) then you want a higher hths viscosity but a diesel 30weight will also give you that, and if your engine is very very worn. As in you have almost no compression and your bearings are almost completely gone, not just high mileage.
In a normal engine heavier oil does accelerate the wear, but it doesnt make it explode immediately so people think its fine. The rings and bearings may have lasted 800,000km on proper oil but only 600,000 on heavier oil. Old Cars can run on almost anything and survive for a while. You can run your car out of oil for a short time and itl still run afterwards. I know a guy who runs 20w50 in all his farm equipment, his f-150 and his impala. They still run, just not well. An old diesel pickup could still run on 0w20 if you didn't put much load on it or work it, it just wouldn't be good for it.
For Ford back recommending the oil they probably did it to engines they had built and left the mazda's alone. in the winter I put 5W20 in my 25yr old car with 400k that calls for 5w30 and i think the 5w20 gets pumped to the hla's faster and they pressurize quicker than with a 30 weight. it seems way more responsive and runs better when cold.
Basically pressure does not lubricate, flow does. Pressure is the resistance to flow. You need enough film thickness to keep the hydrodynamic wedge in the bearings, but you need enough flow to get the oil in there at high rpm. If the thick oil isnt flowing well enough it wont fill the wedge and wont make it up to the piston walls very well even though you have 90psi. If the oil is too thin it will squirt out the sides of the bearings before the revolution is complete and your hydrodynamic wedge will fail and you will enter mixed or barrier lubrication. Same with not getting enough thick oil in there, you enter barrier or mixed lubrication. On startup you always have both of those especially with thick oil. Thicker oil stays on parts longer yes, but longer in minutes, not hours or days. When you start your car up again the oil that is left on lasts about 3 revolutions maybe, then you need new oil and thick oil takes way longer to get there.
Under barrier and mixed lubrication the additive package is what is most important, not viscosity. The new 0w16 oil that coming out relies heavily on its additive package to eliminate wear. A straight 40 or 30 weight has very little additive like that. Those oils are meant for stationary engines or equipment that runs 8-24hr shifts and stays at a mostly fixed rpm. Not suitable for cars. Cheap oils dont have as good of an additive package and will have more wear at startup or high rpm/load.
For oil being squished out of the bearings under high load or stress its the hths viscosity thats important. A 30grade can have a better hths viscosity than a 40 grade depending on how its made. Thats why many diesels can take 30weight now. They just make the oil so it doesn't thin out as much under high shear.
Again, the main point is you want high flow, not high pressure to lubricate. An engine like my mazda B3 will run with probably almost anything from vegetable oil, 0w16, 20w50, to hydraulic oil or atf. Just because it runs and doesn't immediately die doesn't mean its optimal though.
Im still a bit in the heavier oil camp because what i have read leads me to believe the 5w20 oils rely a bit much on their additive package to be good for an f-150 or 250 thats used solely for towing or a car that races and overheats its oil. For any car or truck that asks for 5w20 and doesn't do anything extreme that is best though.
Oil also takes 20minutes of freeway driving to reach operating temperature in a stock civic. I have never had my oil reach op temp in town after a cold start and it takes minimum 20 min on the freeway, cools of when you get to a town. So if you rarely drive over 20min on a freeway you can use a lighter oil and it would never thin out more than the original grade was intended to.
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