What Oil weight do you run?

[Hershey]

went to WAL-MART to check on prices for the Pennzoil PLATINUM Ultra earlier to find 5 quart jug for $28.50 and the quart for $6.87 . Not to bad . Hopefully SOPUS will have some rebates soon to knock cost down . Then will give the 5w-30 ULTRA a try . Maybe the 5w-20 instead . What's your take on the 5w-20 ULTRA for the YARIS ?

[sbergman27]

Originally Posted by Hershey

What's your take on the 5w-20 ULTRA for the YARIS ?

Well, my take is that I wouldn't let a sub 2.8 HTHS oil near any of my cars. There are two arguments for low viscosity oils:

1. It saves maybe 1% on fuel

2. It gets to critical engine parts quicker after start.

You can evaluate the benefits of saving 1% on fuel for yourself. And if you are using a synthetic oil with any ester component at all, then the polar ester molecules will form a weak chemical bond with the metal of the engine parts, and you won't need to worry about oil getting there faster after start. It's already there. Always.

The TSB that Toyota released regarding their recommendation of GF-4 oils, which happened (confusingly) to use 5w20 as an example, has been widely misinterpreted by folks who don't *carefully read the contents of the second red box*.

The final part of the TSB expresses an intention, by Toyota, to recommend thinner oils for post-2006 NZ series engines. And yet... they seem actively to have done an about face upon that. 5w30 is still recommended for the 2010 Yaris' NZ engine. To me, this speaks more loudly than if they had simply remained silent upon the matter. What made them actively decide *not* to actually recommend 5w20 on the 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 Yaris models, I wonder?

I probably shouldn't go so far as to make an actual recommendation here... but... oh, what the hell... *don't use 20wt oil in your Yaris*.

-Steve