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Oil for new Mazda

D

Deweydw

CEG'er
Joined
Oct 10, 2006
Messages
355
Location
Deer Park, Tx.
Just bought a 2007 Mazda3 I Touring Saturday for the wife. It's a 2.0l DOHC 4 speed auto, fwd. When It comes time to change the oil, Mazda recommends 5w20 oil. I was thinking of using 10w30 synthetic. That's what use in my other vehicles. Would this be o.k.?
 
Umm why would you run 10w30? Not too many manf. require that weight. I'm running Motorcraft 5w20 semi synthetic in my g/f's Mazda 6s. It can be obtained at Wal-Mart. Tests from Blackstone on http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/ have shown it can last at least to 5k. Pretty inexpensive too.
 
Use what is recomended, the thicker oil will hurt mileage along with putting undue strain on the moving parts. The new engines are built to closer tolerences and do not require thicker oil.
 
Thanks... I'll have to rethink the other cars when it comes time to change. Just have always used 10w30 because of the warm climate here on the gulf coast. At least that's what I've been told and never thought otherwise. Said it before, say it again, have learned more in the past month from these forums than I have the past 10 years. :cool:
 
the only reason they specify 5w20 is because of emissions. you can run a thicker oil in. yeah you will probably notice a bit of gas mileage loss, unless it has a windage tray, then you might not. ive run 10w30 and 5w30 in my dads focus when it specifies 5w20 without an issue.
 
Thinner oil is going to continue to increase in use. Evertime there is a change there is resistance to the change. The industry went through the same thing when the factories specified 20 because most people felt 30 was better. It happened again when multi-viscosity oil was introduced (10/30), and there was bitter debate when 5/30 was introduced. I imagine that we will go through this again in 20 years when 00/10 oil is introduced.

One petroleum engineer told me a few years back that the future oils will be little more than "slippery water".
 
Big Jim said:
Thinner oil is going to continue to increase in use. Evertime there is a change there is resistance to the change. The industry went through the same thing when the factories specified 20 because most people felt 30 was better. It happened again when multi-viscosity oil was introduced (10/30), and there was bitter debate when 5/30 was introduced. I imagine that we will go through this again in 20 years when 00/10 oil is introduced.

One petroleum engineer told me a few years back that the future oils will be little more than "slippery water".
Click to expand...


haha, thats a good way to explain it. my friends and i joke about the low viscosity oils being about as good as using water.
 
saturnspeed_12 said:
the only reason they specify 5w20 is because of emissions.
Click to expand...

You know, you need to stop just making stuff up; this isn't the first post where you've pulled something completely out of your butt. CAFE <> emissions.

Big Jim said:
Thinner oil is going to continue to increase in use. Evertime there is a change there is resistance to the change. The industry went through the same thing when the factories specified 20 because most people felt 30 was better. It happened again when multi-viscosity oil was introduced (10/30), and there was bitter debate when 5/30 was introduced. I imagine that we will go through this again in 20 years when 00/10 oil is introduced.

One petroleum engineer told me a few years back that the future oils will be little more than "slippery water".
Click to expand...


Jim, you are correct, but only in regards to brand new engine families. For a given engine, you need to run the oil weight that the engine clearances were designed for to get optimal lubrication.

The Mazda 2.0L engine family was developed using 5w30 oil. 5w20 will work, but at increased internal engine wear. See my post in this thread for the story behind why it was changed (the Mazda stuff was done at the same time as the other Ford stuff)

http://www.contour.org/ceg-vb/showthread.php?t=1224&highlight=5W30
 
todras said:
Shouldn't that be switched? Developed using 5w20.
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Nope. The 2.0L DOHC used in the Mazda3 is part of Mazda's Z-family of engines (specifically an MZR variant), which was originally introduced around '95 (the Z-family, not the MZR specifically). Original design and development was done using 5w30 oil. Just like the Ford engines, the recommendation was changed to 5w20 for improvements to CAFE #'s when it was determined that the additional internal wear was not enough to fail engine testing.

Like I said before, either will work just fine, but 5W30 will provide better wear performance at a very slight cost in fuel economy. Usually on the order of something like .1 mpg difference.
 
Rara said:
You know, you need to stop just making stuff up; this isn't the first post where you've pulled something completely out of your butt.
Click to expand...

im not making it up. 5w20 helped drop fuel economy. just another reason they use it.
 
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