Hagen Brothers farms,Goodrich ND | Fla Veggie Farmer - 2/2/2009 11:46
We were using 15-40 in our f-150's. One of the engines took a dump under warranty and Ford voided it. We got educated real quick why. With the OHC the heavier oil doesn't lubricate the cams and valve terrain quick enough on start ups. This truck belonged to a harvest foreman that was constantly in and out of his truck.
The tolerances are very tight on them engines. In Palm Beach County it never gets cold and get really hot in summer, 5-20 worked just fine on the rest of them truck for 200K miles.
A few years ago we set up for bulk oil and had the tanks filled with #30 and #15-40 , thought it would lower costs a bit and not having to handle 30 or 55 gallon drums. Came to the last late fall oil changes, and was gravity filling gallon oil measures out of those bulk tanks.
I got real nervous when I realized that at 0 F the gallon measure took as long to fill with 15-40 as it did with #30, I suspected that the oil company had made a mistake and both bulk tanks were full of #30.
I complained to my oil dealer who said, "pull a sample from both tanks and we will sent them in to be analyzed"
We did that and the reports came back that the oils were as intended, # 15-40 and #30.
That had me totally puzzled, as I could not understand why a multi weight oil that was supposedly near a 15 wt when cold, would not flow into the oil measure any faster than straight #30 ??
My oil dealer got out his oil spec book and we found that 15-40 and straight #30 have an almost identical pour point at 0 F.
Since that all the gas engine cars and pickups that have to run in ND winter temps get Mobil 1 # 0W-30 synthetic oil. They start easily in winter and get instant oil pressure.
We use it all year round. No worse oil consumption than with heavier oil , even when doing heavy trailer pulling in the summer heat.
Putting thick oil in engines designed for thin oil may be like I did to a Chrysler 4 spd manual trans in one of my dirt track race cars. I saw that the original lube in that trans was some water thin red junk (ATF I later found out). I thought, No way for hard use behind a 440, I filled it with # 90 gear lube. What I did not understand was that trans was fitted really tight to use ATF as a lube.
After two laps with the # 90, I seized a gear into the main shaft.
$300 for a new gear and main shaft and a refill with type F ATF got it going again and had no problems with that thin ATF in there behind a gaggle of strong 426 and 440 engines. That was an expensive and embarrassing lesson on substituting a thicker lube than what was specified.
;-( |
5w-20 engine oil in Ford 5.4 Triton?
