Anyone using 5w-20 oil?

[lzrj]

Is anyone using 5w-20 oil. I know it calls for 5w-30 weight but want to see if anyone has been using 5w-20. After switching from having F-150 and Expeditions the past 11 years I'm used to using 5w-20 weight. I know Ford recommended that weight to claim a little fuel saving on those gas sucking V-8's. But I figured if those trucks that are abused and used to haul heavy loads can use that weight without any problems, then it should be fine. The expedition I just sold had 111,000 on it and I always used 5w-20 on it. It still ran as good as new when I sold it. I figure it would help with oil pump wear and maybe a few other small benefits. Any opinions?

[yeldogt]

I would use the recommended oil weight -- everything is set up based on the 30w weight ... you don't want to change it. Some of the very early adopter Fords (90's) did have some issues and many attributed it the he early 20w recommendation. You would not want to have any valve cover low oil pressure issues because of the drop in weight. We have had valve noise in the few 20w engines that we have had --- although they all went 200k without any actual problems. The last one we have now uses High Mile oil to quiet it down.

[Towncivilian]

The VQ35DE engine does shear oil quite a bit, but I believe it shears for something like a thousand miles then levels off; the oil stays at generally the same viscosity at operating temperature, until of course significant oxidation occurs and the additive package is depleted if you ran the oil too long, in which case sludge forms and the oil thickens.

I am not quite sure exactly how much the oil is sheared; perhaps with a 30-grade oil on the thinner side, it will shear into a "heavy" 20-grade, which is probably still within the acceptable limits regardless. See the viscosity chart in this post.

Nissan has not back-spec'd xW-20 oils for any of their engines as Ford has done. I would run the recommended xW-30 grade oil.