Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 16:29:57 -0500
Reply-To: Tom Hargrave <thargrav@HIWAAY.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Tom Hargrave <thargrav@HIWAAY.NET>
Subject: Re: Mixing oils with different weights.
In-Reply-To: <BANLkTi=kQ9EW_nrkH4T1Hu3ac3z7DMhqzA@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
To qualify for the ASE rating, all oils must be compatible, in other words
you can mix any ASE certified oil with any ASE certified oil.
This also leads into another "secret" that most engine oil manufactures
won't tell you because it blows their marketing plans. To guarantee that
anything will mix with anything they all have to be using the same basic
additive packages and this includes the viscosity indexers. They may tweak
percentages here and there but the additives are all basically the same.
One exception is base stock, the raw oil that becomes engine oil. And base
stock is what makes full synthetic better than DINO engine oil. Also, base
stock is the starting point of multi-grade oils. For example the base stock
for 5w-30 is lighter or less viscous than the base stock for 20w-50. The
viscosity indexers add range to the base stock and are what make a 10w oil
into a 10w-40.
I suspect that mixing oils will net an average as long as the base or bottom
number is the same but mixing different base numbers is too complex to
figure out. But like I said earlier, anything can mix with anything or the
oil would not be ASE certified.
Thanks, Tom Hargrave
www.stir-plate.com
www.towercooler.com
www.kegkits.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
Don Hanson
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2011 2:01 PM
To: vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com
Subject: Mixing oils with different weights.
If you were to mix 20w 50 weight with say..5w 30, would you expect an end
viscosity somewhere proportionate to how the ratios were 'blended'? I
inherited a bunch of oil, mostly pretty light weights...like maybe 5 cases,
ranging from 10w to 10-40 and straight 20 and 30w. I like to run about 15w
40w in my inline Jetta motored van and I change it out at 3000 (+/-)
miles...With all this light weight oil kicking around, I would like to just
buy some heavy oil and mix in a quart or two of the lighter free stuff...Use
it up...
Acceptable?
Don Hanson
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