Simple oil question

[Navaros911]

Last week I was sitting in very slow moving traffic with 110+ degrees F outside... The car was doing fine on approach with the temp needle sitting just under the halfway point on the gauge.

As time went by the temp needle started creeping higher and higher... when it hit the 3/4 - or maybe just under it - point the oil pressure warning light went on.

This happened only when sitting idle with less than 1000 rpms... actually the car in that traffic was struggling not to stall and hit some 550rpm spots before coming back up to 800... at that time the oil pressure would drop to 0.6 bar maybe (half way between the bottom and one up from the bottom) and the oil warning would go on. Pushing the accelerator to get the rpms up to about 1500 would make it go away, but when I let go the same would happen again.

Needless to say I got out of the traffic ASAP and headed the other direction at 60mph and all was fine after 10 mins.

Now my question is: should I consider other oil since it is always HOT in this country?

Currently she is running on 0W40 Mobil 1... should I consider 20W50 or 10W50 or so?

[jpachard]

Yes, You should be running 15/50 synthetic Mobil 1 or similar if you can. Depending on what kind of driving you do, change it more frequently too. As an example, I change mine after ever 10-12hrs. of running on the track.

As far as your oil warning light coming on at 550RPM, that sounds normal but I would have to check in order to give you a definitive answer. Does your idle often hunt this much? This is an indicator of other potential problems.

Cheers, James

[Bill Verburg]

Originally Posted by Navaros911

Last week I was sitting in very slow moving traffic with 110+ degrees F outside... The car was doing fine on approach with the temp needle sitting just under the halfway point on the gauge.

As time went by the temp needle started creeping higher and higher... when it hit the 3/4 - or maybe just under it - point the oil pressure warning light went on.

This happened only when sitting idle with less than 1000 rpms... actually the car in that traffic was struggling not to stall and hit some 550rpm spots before coming back up to 800... at that time the oil pressure would drop to 0.6 bar maybe (half way between the bottom and one up from the bottom) and the oil warning would go on. Pushing the accelerator to get the rpms up to about 1500 would make it go away, but when I let go the same would happen again.

Needless to say I got out of the traffic ASAP and headed the other direction at 60mph and all was fine after 10 mins.

Now my question is: should I consider other oil since it is always HOT in this country?

Currently she is running on 0W40 Mobil 1... should I consider 20W50 or 10W50 or so?

Is your oil cooling fan working?

[Navaros911]

The idle started hunting about two weeks ago... so I looked at it. Checked the microswitches (I can hear it clicking at the idle point and the WOT point - and the OBC checks for correct functioning of it anyway). Didn't get around to cleaning the idle stabilizer valve... next would be checking the Oxygen sensor (which I think my car doesn't have BTW) and the MAF sensor.

But while I was checking the hunting went away again. I will clean the ISV anyway since it is easy and cheap.

The cooling fan is working... I can hear it quite well, but maybe the radiator needs to be cleaned from gunk. That's a good point!

Normally I change oil once per year - or every 10.000 KM (7k Miles I guess).

I will go for the 15W50 next time... brands that are readily available here are Castrol (maybe the GTX 20W50 or the Magnatec 10W50) or Elf oils.

Any tips in terms of brands?

[cgfen]

Originally Posted by Navaros911

Last week I was sitting in very slow moving traffic with 110+ degrees F outside... The car was doing fine on approach with the temp needle sitting just under the halfway point on the gauge.




Currently she is running on 0W40 Mobil 1... should I consider 20W50 or 10W50 or so?

one option to running 50 wt oil, is to consider adding a manual switch to run your oil cooler on high speed when required.
But living in Bahrain, 15-50 is probably a good idea.

see here

diy

to troubleshoot your system and to add override switch if you wish.

Craig

[Hamptonsam]

I have the override switch and it works great for me.