I recently switch to synthetic 5W-20, and been noticing that my oil been going under the low line on dipstick after 7000 KM.
Is this normal? i have 130,000 km on the car.
What oil did you use before the switch? Reason for switching?
IMHO, you can run 5w-30 all year. Pennzoil Platinum is one good choice in 5w-30 as it's a 'thinner' 5w-30 oil and with its cleaning abilities may help getting piston rings 'free' again resulting in less or no oil consumption.
Also, if you have a chance to pickup this - Schaeffer Manufacturing 0132-023 Moly EP Oil Treatment, give it a try.
I was just using regular crude oil from the dealership. I had free oil changes from them for 5 years.
I decided to switch to synthetic because i started doing my own oil changes.
I am using Pennzoil Platinum 5W-20 Synthetic. 5W-20 is what show on the oil cap and car manual to use.
Will switching to 5W-30 help with the oil consumption? is it thicker?
I went from 5w-20 Walmart brand synthetic to 5w-30 Mobil 1 synthetic......The change in oil consumption was almost unbelievable on my 100,000 + mile engine.
( probably not a scientifically accurate test since I changed brands and weights, but I was so impressed I kept with the 5w30 )
Penn Plat in 5w-30 is one of the thinnest if not the thinnest 5w-30 out there and is very close to Penn Plat 5w-20 but provides better cleaning for engine internals. Objective is to free up piston rings to then reduce gap and thus oil dilution with gas and also burning oil.
One of the main reasons Kia 'recommends' 5w-20 is due to North American push for reduced gas consumption and it's the thinnest oil Kia would approve. I ran Penn Plat 5w-20 in both cars and then switched to 5w-30 and beside smoother and quieter running engine there were no other effects including no effect on gas consumption. More to it, I ran 0w-40 in both cars one very hot summer and.. gas mileage improved!
If 5w-30 doesn't reduce your oil consumption, try 10w-30 at least in summer, your car manual should show it as approved and acceptable for the engine.
I'd also suggest doing oil changes every 6000 km or 200 hrs of running engine even with synthetic oil. Your dash may have a counter for engine running time and then you can reset it at oil change.
I have had great success with the 'high mileage' oils on the market.
Designed for engines in excess of 75K miles.
Pressure went up, consumption down, noise down.
Give them a try. Several good name brand oils produce the high mileage types.
Good luck!
The comment from Lou O is good advice. High mileage oils often reduce oil consumption on higher mileage engines based on many stories shared on forums. Definitely worth a try. My Rio has about 75000 miles and so far doesn’t use oil between 5k oil change intervals. I have used 5w20 and 5w30 at different times, sometimes Pennzoil Platinum and some Valvoline synthetic. Haven’t noticed any difference. And some engines just consume oil.
I found on my engine that between oil changes full synthetic used more oil than regular 5w20. To me on this car, it isnt really worth running full synthetic because the oil gets dirty quick unless you are doing it in the winter in subzero temps for better flow.
I agree that sounds normal, because on the older higher mileage engines that have been run on dinosaur oil for most of their life, switching to synthetic later has minor side affects, this being one of them.
Many 5w-20 oils are semi synth oils anyway even if they don't say that on the bottle.
Example - Valvoline, check out 'premium quality synthetic blend basestocks' in first paragraph:
I'm at 75,000 miles. I switched from 5W20 conventional to 5W20 high mileage full synthetic. It's a little early for me to see a definitive pattern, but so far it appears that the full synthetic is moving down the oil dipstick faster than the conventional was, i.e., it appears that the full synthetic is burning away faster than the conventional was.
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