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0W-20 or 5W-20 engine oil

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33K views 75 replies 34 participants last post by  bluegrass  
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#1 ·
My 2019 Ridgeline says to use 0W-20 oil but my 2017 Jeep Wrangler lists 5W-20 engine oil. Are these oils close enough that I could use the 5W-20 in both vehicles so I wouldn't have to keep a supply of 2 different oils.
My Ridgeline has approx. 7,000 miles and the jeep 12,000 miles. We don't drive the vehicles much, mostly the motorhome if going very far from home.
 
C
#10 ·
Similar here. 1 truck, 1 SUV, 3 motorcycles. If you’re worried about grabbing the wrong oil for the wrong vehicle, just write with a bold marker on the case of oil, or the gallon, what vehicle it’s for when you bring it home.
Or, I have a board on my garage wall that I list the oil weights/filter specs and tire pressures for each vehicle and just grab what I need at the time from the storage shelf.
 
#11 ·
I get my oil changed at the dealership where I purchased it, that is Honda's at the Honda dealership, RAM and Jeep at the Chrysler dealership, but I do my John Deere equipment and motorcycles in my shop where I use Shell Rotella-T Synthetic. I would probably use the Shell R-T in my vehicles, but I don't do oil changes in my vehicles.
trainman
 
#13 ·
I'm sure I'll catch some flack for this, but whatever...

The only difference between 5W20 and 0W20 is the cold viscosity. As the engine temperature warms up, the viscosities align. So if you look up any published viscosity vs. temperature graph, you'll see that when cold there is a difference in viscosity that disappears the warmer the engine gets. But all that means is that there are two temperatures probably about 10 degrees apart when cold where 5W20 and 0W20 are the exact same viscosity. If the Ridgeline had an oil pressure gauge, you'd be able to see that the oil pressure would be the same when hot.

All we're really talking about here is running the thinnest, lowest viscosity oil that keeps metal parts from touching. The engine might actually last longer if you run slightly thicker oil. But your fuel economy will suffer some, so of course Honda doesn't recommend it.

Void the warranty because of running slightly thicker oil? Really? How exactly are they going to know you used 5W20 instead of 0W20 unless you tell them. The oil viscosity changes more than that over the course of 10,000 miles anyway. Which direction is difficult to determine. Sometimes viscosity goes up and sometimes it goes down. That depends of lots of factors including how much fuel is making it past the rings to thin the oil, but it varies from engine to engine.

Years and years and, ugh, years ago... You had to run different oil in different seasons. Even after multi-vis oil came out, I had cars that could burn a quart of oil in well under 1,000 miles. In the summer, just run thicker oil and the burning problem mostly went away. In the hot months, I remember having to run 20W50 racing oil and switching to 10W40 in the winter because the starter wasn't strong enough to crank the engine over with 20W50 when it got too cold out.

The point is that for best fuel economy and engine power, you should run the THINNEST oil possible that achieves proper oil pressure to lubricate the bearings (but be prepared for the engine to use lots of oil). For longest engine life, you should run the THICKEST oil possible that doesn't over-pressure the pump and keep oil from flowing to the bearings. Which means that neither is the best oil because what you really want is good fuel economy and reasonable engine life.
 
#18 · (Edited)
Some additional points to consider... just to include in the thread overall for those reading about the differences.
  • The "W" stands for "Winter Rating" for the ambient viscosity .. 0W is always a synthetic oil, 5W can be either synthetic or conventional. Of course, you never It isn't recommended to mix those.. (Google it and read the caveats, and make your own call)
  • A lower "W" will flow easier through all components vital to tight bearing clearances. But a higher "W" will adhere slightly more and is more beneficial for looser tolerances. Japanese motors have notoriously been known to have tight tolerances. That COULD be a difference between the Jeep and Honda (I am speculating here, but I once saw a great Youtube video showing the tolerance differences of the various motorcycle manufacturers and the Japanese built, were pretty impressive, including Honda... the Italian built were mostly pretty terrible)
  • Depending on tolerances of the engine by design, a higher "W" rating increases the oil pressure before warm up and can make it stressful for tight tolerance motors and for the oil pump to operate as it should, it can also stress the gaskets and other components in colder temps. Honda has engineered the engine to utilize a 0w even above an ambient temp of 100 F.
  • 0w and 5w comparatively as synthetic oils are similar (outside of meeting exact requirements of the tolerances), but a minor edge to 0w for carbon emissions. sludge buildup reduction and reduced varnish deposits. The engineering trend lately is to design for the lower viscosities for better wear and fuel efficiency, emissions and stress.
  • The difference to require a 5w over 0w in hot weather (when the manufacturer recommends 0w) is typically under extreme or racing circumstances and not under normal operation by design.
So that said, Jeep just has different operating specs than Honda... and this is why the general consensus is to not mess with stuff outside of the manufacturer's recommendation, even if you sorta know the basic characteristics of oil and you "think" you are doing better by making different choices. I suffer with making those wrong choices in other facets (like mixing cleaners, modifying my guitars, or the general "more is better thinking"... etc) :)
 
#28 ·
Nervey said:
0W is always a synthetic oil, 5W can be either synthetic or conventional. Of course, you never want to mix those (or any different viscosities)
Click to expand...
Ok, so maybe this is a dumb question, but why not mix any of the above? Synthetic/Conventional blends were all the rage for a while when synthetics were very expensive. I never ran any of them and just stuck with conventional, but they were sure advertised as being the ticket. I think Valvoline still sells DuraBlend semi-synthetic, for example.
And certainly 30+ years ago if the weather started warming up before my truck needed an oil change, I'd just start replenishing the burned oil with thicker oil to slow that process down. At any given time I'd have at least 3 viscosities of oil on the shelf so I could "tune" the oil pressure gauge to the outside air temperature. That's what having to add a quart every 1,000 miles or so lets you do.
 
#19 ·
The 2005-2009 Ridgeline and Pilot had oil cap that says 5W20. Honda said use 0W20 to get .3 MPG more.

Any competent mechanic will say it is fine to use either.

If you have an engine problem get a oil cap from any 2006-2009 Honda V6 - it will say 5W20 in it.
 
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#20 ·
We had an 07' Cadillac CTS with the 2.8 engine in it. We bought it used with 69k mi on it. The problem with it was it wanted 5w-30 oil and only Mobil one and it burned that oil like crazy and would actually be off the dipstick for being low very quickly and usually less than 1000mi. I switched to using 10w-30 Synthetic in there and the oil consumption dropped to maybe a quart burned in 5,000mi. It was enough for me to say that it was a success and 5w surely didn't make any difference to the engine other than it liked it better. Your money your call. That's the bottom line.
 
#22 ·
No I knew the Previous Owner. He was my BIL. He didn't do any work himself. It was a lease vehicle through his company. He just took it when it said it needed the oil changed or a light on the dashboard came on. The same garage did all work on this company's vehicles. He never said anything about the condition of the car when we bought it for my wife. My guess is he didn't even know anything about how it was maintained. The mechanic I'm guessing was the one putting in a heavier weight oil and probably for the reason I mentioned. It still had some warranty left when we bought it through Cadillac. I had the rear differential recall done (they replaced the whole diff as GM had a lot of problems with seals leaking and this one did too) and while in for that I asked about the oil consumption and the dealer said "normal for these cars". OK. Whatever. That's when I figured out 10w-30 worked a lot better. And did till 99k miles and when we traded it in on a SRX.
 
#23 ·
If you post this one day before many could consider this an April 1st joke. A really good one.

I don't get what is the complexity of having different oil types. 🤷‍♂️ 🤷‍♂️ 🤷‍♂️ 🤷‍♂️ 🤷‍♂️
 
M
#24 ·
0W-20 basically covers all the climate temperatures form extreme cold to hot.....If you dont live where it gets -40 in the winter time than you will be fine to run 5W 20 all year......I have run 5W20 in both my ridgeline and toyota Rav4 without any issues and its cold where i live..............both are high milage vehicles........it also comes down to mpg.......thinner oil...less resistance in cold weather......had a harley once that I had to use straight 50W so it would not leak so much out of the side cover.... ......good old days.....
 
#30 ·
From Mobils website:

“Synthetic blend oil is a mix of conventional motor oils and synthetic base stocks. Because of the added synthetic base stock, you’re going to get more performance and protection than you would by using a conventional oil alone.”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
B
#31 ·
However, show me an oil bottle that specifies the synthetic blend percentages. Maybe it exists, but I’ve never seen one. It could be 98% conventional, 2% synthetic, and there’s your blend. Give it a pretty label, call it synthetic blend, charge more for it. Customer sees “synthetic“ on the bottle and happily pays more.

Maybe it’s a 50/50 blend, maybe 2/98; who knows? There is apparently no standard for this blend business.
 
C
#33 · (Edited)
I have a difficult time imagining how a blend could be better than either a straight conventional or a straight synthetic. The conventional oil is engineered with certain ingredients in exact amounts for maximum performance. The synthetic oil is engineered with certain ingredients in exact amounts for maximum performance. I don’t see how combining the two would automatically give you a better oil. You’d just be getting a diluted trade-off of the amounts that were previously decided the oils needed.

If a blend was so much better, wouldn’t the vast majority of oils on the market be blends instead of a being a vast minority as it is now? And wouldn’t manufacturers specify to use a blend? There may be some but I’m not aware of any that specify a blend.

I believe we have blends to appeal to somewhat confused and undecided people in both camps- conventional and synthetic. The conventional user is wondering if synthetic is the way to go in the 21st century, and the guy already leaning toward synthetic may be hesitant to completely leave what’s been working for him for 5 decades.
 
#34 ·
I think there's a lot of misconceptions about synthetic oil. It's my understanding that there's really nothing synthetic about synthetic oil (if most people believe that "synthetic" means "man made"). It still comes from the exact same place as conventional oil. Exact. Same. Place. It's just gone through more refining which may chemically alter it to help reduce oil break-down. This is where it gets really fuzzy because oil companies understandably won't reveal their secret sauce.
 
#36 ·
There has been lots of controversy about Synthetic oil ever since Mobil one made the first Synthetic. It was a true Synthetic oil and then others decided to play that game. The problem was and still is there's no definition of Synthetic oil. What we have is a bunch of money thrown at legislators to keep all that branding under the table so we don't know the true nature of the game in oils. Sad. But, in the EU and in Canada there are better definitions of Synthetic and the Blends also. So look there if you want to see some real defining factors in oils. Royal Purple is one that is the same in the US and Canada. And it's a very good oil. And we do have EU rated oils available here as well for BMW's, Audi and Mercedes. Those are all good oils as well if you don't want to play the oil guessing game. Personally I've been using the Quaker State Green bottle Synthetic ever since we saw some testing of it. I use that oil in all my powered engine equipment and it's worked well.
 
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