Thanks. I'll do a more frequent check now. I haven't had a car burn a
quart of oil between changes for probably 40-50 years. I still change
the Chrysler LHS oil every 3,000 miles since it does a lot of local
mileage and, at that interval and 110,000 miles it shows no appreciable
loss of oil. But 10,000 miles on the Buick Lucerne and this Chrysler
T&C is a long time to go without looking at the dipstick. I'll start
checking it more often.
I also decided to do a little research on how long Chrysler has been
recommending 5W-20W oil in its engines. My car has a 3.6L engine which
was new in 2011. I thought perhaps the use of 5W-20W oil started then.
In fact, Chrysler started recommending 5W-20W oil for their 3.3 and 3.8L
V6 engines in 2005. These engines existed previously and with a spec
for 5W-30W oil before 2005. They also offered a 4.0L V6 for 2008-2010
before it was replaced by the 3.6L in 2011. But the 4.0L oil
recommendation is for 5W-30W and I don't know why it's different. I
also note that the change to 5W-20W from earlier engines was during the
time Chrysler was owned by Daimler and the specification for the 5W-20W
oil to be used is a DaimlerChrysler spec. I'd have thought that 8 years
of low viscosity oil usage would be plenty of time to notice problems
and change specs if appropriate. But your mention of Mercedes having
problems in Consumer Reports long term tests is some cause for concern.
I'll have to dig up those reports.
Chuck Norcutt
On 11/7/2013 12:39 PM, Charles Geilfuss wrote:
> That was me, Chuck. Most new cars are calling for 0-20W oil which is
> quite thin. I have come across a number of Car blog sites in which many
> people are complaining of excess oil consumption in new vehicles of a
> number of different makes. Consumers Report also described high oil
> consumption in three models of cars they were doing long term tests:
> Mercedes, Subaru and I forget the third. Subaru particularly seems to be
> having issues with their new 2 liter engine. Could be a bad batch of rings
> coupled with very low viscosity oil. Stay tuned and watch that oil level.
>
> Charlie
> 2004 Honda CR-V, 200k miles and no oil burning yet
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 6:11 PM, Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> wrote:
>
>> 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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