Somewhere in the chatter about spare wheels or lack thereof and how
modern cars are equipped or not equipped someone mentioned that
manufacturers are now using 20W oil to reduce engine friction. Someone
else commented that this might lead to high oil consumption such as
burning 1 quart per 1,000 miles.
This concerned me because I do have a new Chrysler T&C and had never
heard about using 20W oil. You might logically infer that I've never
changed the oil on that car and you'd be right. Right now it has 8,500
miles on it and the oil change monitoring system has yet to call for a
change despite the mileage and 10 months of usage. That doesn't concern
me since the car is used almost exclusively for long distance travel.
The Buick that preceded it had a similar system and would usually go
almost 10,000 miles between changes.
But comments about 20W oil and potentially burning 1 quart per 1,000
miles were concerning so I decided I better go have a look. The engine
does indeed call for 5W-20W oil. With great trepidation I pulled the
dipstick expecting I might see a horribly low level after 8,500 miles
given no attention whatsoever. The "safe range" marked on the dipstick
has a distance of about 10mm between high and low marks. The current
level is about 3mm down from the high mark. The oil looks very clean.
Looks OK to me. :-)
Chuck Norcutt
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