bradtx

Hi All, My '11 3.7L specs the 5W20 weight, but since it's hot in the summer here I changed to 5W30. The truck has ~131K miles now and I've had it a ~1 year with mostly the expected maintenance items.

The two items that might be expected; increased oil pressure reading and perhaps a quieter cam chain (not so noisey anyway) are not really detectable. What is detectable is the transition of the TIVCT. It has gone from an almost turbo like boost to nearly undetectable. I am not sure why and it may point to trouble brewing or a case of "only for my truck", but driveability is much more linear.

Brad

KTMJack

Your motor won't know the difference.
It's all about gas mileage A lighter oil takes less power to pump it .

bradtx

I agree. With ~1K miles since the change, MPG is very much the same as w/10W20. With sensitive test eqpt. in a lab I suspect a difference, but 'real world' number crunching shows no negatives.
Ethanol percentage is a much greater influence.

Brad

montanaman

I can add something here.

My 2011 5.0 has 142,000 miles on it, and much of its life I used it like a 3/4 ton.

When it was new, it took a while to break in and used a little oil until the 2nd oil change.

Then - no oil usage until last fall, when I did a driving trip across the country, it used 3 quarts in 3500 miles.

I then changed the oil, and it used a quart in the next 1500 miles.

I then noticed, that on the wife’s car, a 2014 Taurus Police Sedan, That the dealer serviced it with 5W30 instead of 5W20, on all the police cars.

So I changed the oil I was using to 5W30 Mobil 1.

And it shouldn’t make any difference, but in two oil changes after that, my truck hasn’t been using oil.

I’m not going to stop checking it until I do the next marathon drive, but for some reason the very slightly thicker oil isn’t being consumed.