GenVibe - Community for Pontiac Vibe Enthusiasts

I have a 2003 GT and am looking to do some oil changes myself and have some quick questions.i have been told by a toyota and pontiac dealership that the oil filters for the base and GT are the same even though my book lists different GM parts Numbers, why? can i use the same ones? I also wonder if i can use the toyota filters for the pontiac GT? i have a 90915-YZZE2 toyota filter in my hand that the toyota dealership said was for the bigger engine, will this work?My last question is on the recommended oils. The book says 5x30 nothing really thicker why? i have been told by a oil guru that anything under 15x50 is crap and does nothing for the longevity of your motor. What will the 15x50 do to the GT if i put it in anyway? He says the 5x30 breaks down 10 times faster than the 15x50 and the 5x30 is there for better gas mileage and to shorten the engine life so you can buy another car.thanks for any helpMark

Yes, they do use two different filters. The GT one is slightly larger I believe. You can use the GT one on the base, but I would not recommend using the base on the GT.As to weights: I don't know much about oil, but if GM tells me to use 5W-30, I'm going to use 5W-30. If you put anything else in there, and the engine doesn't like it, and your car dies, and Pontiac does an oil test to ensure your oil was changed regularly and the right stuff was in there (and they'll do it if it comes to warranty-replacing an engine), then you're SOL because you used an oil other than what the manufacturer specified.And yes, you can use AC Delco filters. You can use any brand filter you want, as long as it's indicated for the 2ZZ engine. I use either Toyota or ACD, depending on where I am when I pick it up.

You need a new guru. In general it is better to not have such a large spread (15-50W vise 5-30W) in a multi viscosity not to mention the OEM recommendations

High compression engine. High revving engine. It needs a light oil so it doesn't gunk/burn up. Your 'friend' is probably right if it's on a carbourated engine, but as of late, 5w-30/10w-30 is the norm, and 5w is the norm on most Toyota engines for at least the last few years.

15w50 doesn't have a wider spread as far as viscosity improvers are concerned than a 5w30. It's actually a lower percentage difference of viscosity. A good 15w50 is also resistant to sluge and varnish and will stay in the engine longer than a lighter oil. That's why you go to higher visc. on older cars. There is a reason the guy likes it for older Detroit iron. It is however too thick for your motor. It isn't going to flow well enough across your tightly toleranced bearings, be like molasses on cold mornings and create heat, waste energy, reduce fuel mileage, produce less net horsepower due to pumping losses and more wear due to flow and cold start issues. A lite 40 weight like M1 0w40 should work fine but any 30w is OK. The 2zz filter is larger. Any purolator or Wix is good. Napa Gold, Carquest Blue are Wix. You can also go oversize on the filter. I'll be trying a oversize Purolator Pure one soon. http://ecat.arvinmeritor.com/s...20195 These filter very well but will be somewhat more resistant to flow because of it. The larger size will let it flow great. My car is out of warranty so I can use what I like.

thanks for some help, maybe the part numbers for the proper oil filter would have been cool.as far as the oil goes i am sticking with this guy as he runs the largest dyno in the world and have been testing and running engines for 28 years. He tell me and shows me that 5w is cheap a$$ crap and you will get 20-50k more miles out of a typical engine using 15w over 5w i am going to go with him. he mentioned to me last night that the thicker oil on start up is no problem, maybe 1 second of delay compared to 5w oil which is worthless after 1000 miles and you go another 2000 miles before changes. I have two high revving bikes with fuel injection and both have 20x50 so i guess i answered my own ?, thanks and good luck.

"Guys, I'll pipe in now. I happen to do research and testing of engine oils for a living at Southwest Research Institute in Texas. First off, break-in crap is crap. Modern engines using modern materials for rings and cylinders do not rely on wear to seat rings. Ring seating is a function of design, geometry, and mostly cylinder pressures. You don't need or even want rings to wear to seat and they don't need metal-to-metal contact to do it. That's what oil also does, seals the rings BTW. Also, not all syn oils now are true syns. Mobil sued Castrol and lost several years ago as Castrol started using highly refined Group III mineral oils and calling them syn. Came down to judge's decision on what is natural and what is man made. There is even talk of calling Group II oils, the most common mineral oil used in most oils now, syn, so buyer beware. I use Mobil products in everything, cars, truck, and bikes. Have done radioactive wear test on rings, cylinders, valvetrain parts where we can measure wear rates while the engine is running and test dozens of oil in a short period of time. The higher vis grades like 40 and 50 always show lower wear. As much as 10 times less ! I'll post a graph of this sometime that compares a 10W-30 vs a 15W-40 vs a 20W-50. We don't test/certifiy too many 50's as most cars are now 5W, 10W-30's and Honda and Ford are specing even 0W-20's now for fuel economy as the pay fines on this along with emissions. They don't care if your engine wears out fast, that's another sale to them IMHO. HD trucks, my main area of expertise, are about 98% 15W-40's as they expect these engines to last 1,000,000 miles minimum. Not aware Shell RT is a 5W-40, that's Mobil Delvac 1 and their new SUV and Truck oil, yellow cap, happens to be Delvac 1 BTW, trust me I know, know the formulator very well. DELO 400 is probably the best HD oil out there bar none and is good oil to use in any car or bike in a pinch. I use either MB1 15-50 red cap or their 20W-50 V Twin m/c oil. Don't let the V Twin nonsense scare you off. It has the exact same additive package of their 10W40 MX4T sport bike oil just a thicker vis grade BTW. Again, trust me on this, I know. So I will only use 15 or 20W -50's, period. Mobil 1 has the highest high temp/high shear vis I've seen, HTHS is critical for wear protection and the big 4 Jap companies are in fact looking into this now. I'll provide a link to this very subject shortly. Yes, big diff to cars as m/c oil also lubes gearbox and clutch. I change out my factory fill oil asap, CBR was 200 miles, then the good stuff. Only reason to wait or not use good stuff on new build is dirt/debri left in engine from rebuild/build and an early change gets that out. Every engine we test we do an oil change on after an hour of running at full load. We have special oil filter where we can see what is in them and let me tell you it will scare the hell out ofyou, red rag lint, casting flash, crap of all kinds. Engines are like surgery on humans, can't be clean enough and we use special clean rooms to build ours that are like operating rooms, positive pressure to keep out airborne dirt and other measures. What else, oh, syn don't last longer in all cases so drain interval should be no more than 2x normal and I go only 3000 on my bikes, oil is cheap you know and the more you buy from my clients the more they spend on R&D testing and the more bikes I can afford ! More later maybe or even better ask away...I'm a Staff engineer and have been designing and running oil test for 23 years now. I've designed just about all the HD diesel oil certification test and we measure ring, cylinder, valvetrain wear, vis control, sludge, deposits, filter plugging, oil consumption, etc... you name it, we test for it. Car oils are only tested for cam wear, sludge, and fuel economy. Don't ask me why. There are no standard test, yet, for 4 stroke m/c oils and I aim to fix that soon ! "--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Thanks, you're right and its sad and embarassing that my business, the oil biz is so full of crap and even worse, mis-information and out right lies. The API is run by oil company snake oil salesman and how it got this way is beyond me. There are real, big differences in oils even among the 'good" ones. I know, I've seen it as I have tested about 95%+ of them. The extreme case, no oil at all, how long will your engine last ? Not long. Don't get me going to additives like Slick 5?, they dont do jack. How do I know, I tested them as they all got sued by the FTC for unsubsantiated performance claims of benefits with no, NO data. They only ran our oil cert test to prove to the govt their crap didn't hurt anything. Oil does make a difference, a big one. Most engines finally go south via wear, as all machines do BTW, and start using oil, making smoke and eventually loosing power if driven far enough. I've seen oils that break conrod copper bushings due to corrosive attack and split the rod in half and toss rod out one side of the blockand the piston out the other side, yipee ! Seen other oil that wore piston ring groove so much rings acted like a jack hammer and broke the piston lands on the piston. These were oil problems. Remember on a HD diesel at 2100 rpm piston/ring/rod see 500G's of loading from decel and reversal of direstion at TDC. A bike at 12,000 sees much more, I'll do the math on that Monday. Oils matter and it is worth your hard earn $$ to get the good stuff. Hell, it's cheap. Compare cost to slip on, chain, tires, etc... This is why there are oil tests, not because the oil companies do it on their own sense of good, it's because OEM engine companies demand it. Most HD companies like Mack and Cummins and Cat have their own oil specs as API is too slow and too resistant to improvements that cost them money. When I started in this business, HD oils were drained at 10,000 miles and engines lasted 1/2 million. Drain intervals now are 40-60K or more and engines are expected to last no less than 1,000,000 or Roger Penske and UPS and Ryder buy a different engine make on their next 10,000 truck order, plain and simple. Trucks cost what 100,000+ and engines are 20-30,000 $$ in a 18 wheeler. They don't screw around. I have 185,000 miles on my Caddy Northstar, zero oil consumption or problems except the stupid water pump ! Have 100,000+ on my IROC. Mobil 1 15W-50 in all and they can stick that 5W or 10W-30 crap up their butts. Oh and the fuel economy benefit they get on those ? 1-2 % max, if that much and they are just now testing for this with used oil, old test were on new oil only and FE benefit disappears in about a 1000 miles for various reasons like vis increase. I'll take a loss in mpg of what, 2% of 20 mpg = 0.4 mpg versus my $30K car lasting at least 100,000 miles and more. Do the math on what cost/saves you more over the life of the car. It's all BS IMHO but what do I know. Oil is sold like oranges or t-shoes, what taste the best or has the nicest packaging, nonsense. I loved the Castrol commericial with the geek engineers standing around in the test lab in lab coats and clipboards in front of engines that didn't even have fan guards on them, yeah right ! Not this geek BSME Texas A&M grad. IF any of you are ever in the SATX area stop by and I'll show you a real test lab. I have 32 test cells of 600+ hp HD diesels smoking away 24/7 and I'll even buy lunch. These engines pull about 2000 ft*lbs of torque at oh, 1000 rpm. HD indeed. They'll eat a bad oil for breakfast".

"Bike oils do have slightly higher treat levels, more additives although the Mobil oils are very close. I can post that data Monday from work as I check them regularly. I bought some Repsol from CG, sexy bottle for sure, very $$$, but not too impress with it's analysis although I bought the racing oil. Low treat level but they expect oil to get change rapidly I guess. Meant to pick-up their street bike oil sometime, I think it's a 10W and I don't like 10W's at all. Every 10W-whatever I've seen tested and even on our radioactive tests, sucked ! Some of this is most 10W's are for Europe and just don't perform well in US engines ? Long story and I won't bore you all with it. Remember GM banned all 10W's in their cars when multi-grades 1st came out as they caused piston deposit problems, too much viscosity improver, VI, in them. VI is polymer/plastic. A good way to look at it is 10W-40's have a 4-1 spread in vis, 40/10, where as a 20W-50 is only 2.5-1, get it ? The bigger this ratio the more VI/plastic the oil has in it. A little simple as this is not so true with syn, real syn oils, as they have what is known as a very high viscosity index meaning their vis doesn't drop as much as it heats up and require less Vis improver additives. 1 of 2 main advantages to true syns, that and their far superior oxidation/high temp performance along with very good low temp flow properties as they have no, zero, wax in them. Mineral oils all have wax naturally in them. This is what makes them "freeze" up and not flow at low temps as wax has a very high freeze point and solidifies the oil. As oils get more refined, going from Group I to II to III, more wax and sulfur is removed and it's viscosity index goes up. The sepeation in groups is actually defined by it's sulfur level and viscosity index. When you get to group III's they are pretty damn clean and that's why Castrol is calling them Syns too now and Mobil lost it's law suit against them. At some point you have refined/changed the oil so much it's no longer natural, it's a man made product so it's a syn ! That was the argument and it worked. True syns are classified as group IV's BTW. Back on track, there was a very good article this year in Sport Rider that compared auto oils to m/c oils. I'll try to find it, it was posted I think on another web site. They basically concluded m/c oils had higher treat levels as not restricted by Govt and EPA regs, yet. Are they worth 2X price ? Probably not but we may get forced into using them if auto oils continue to get forced into lower treat levels and low vis grades for cars. I keep a close eye on MB1 Red for any changes by sampling it at work plus I know the guys that make it very well and they keep me alerted. It's a damn good oil at this point in time, no 15W-50 is ever going to be a fuel efficient one so no reason for it to change. If sales drop way off then it may get dropped and then I would switch back to the 20W-50 m/c oil. I won't use any 10W's, too much ugly data, high wear, for me to sleep at nite with it. Again, 15W or 20W-50's for all my stuff, in a pinch, a 15W-40 HD diesel oil".

Bike engines tend to run hotter and therfore the oil will be thinner in use. You're also using an oil that needs to allow good synchro action since the motor oil is also the tranny lube. Early drain in bikes is a must because they tear up an oil faster and there is tranny/wet clutch material contaminating the oil. Bikes are supposed to use 40w or 50w. Because of the environment the oil is in (gear shear, small sump, high heat, etc.) bikes shear the most stable oils very quickly and a 50w becomes a 40w in no time. Your car won't do this nearly as easily.Most car engines will be best protected with about a 40w but a proper 30w with a good add package often will show the same or less wear. I know of someone that tracks a BMW M3 and was using Redline 20w 50. It showed a lot of bearing wear on oil testing. On recommendation, he switched to a 10w40 Redline and the wear fell into the normal range. http://theoildrop.server101.co...01917 Countries that don't have to deal with EPA or API specs tend to recommend 30-40 weight oils depending on the climate. If you leave near the equator, 50 may be best but in NJ stick with something that srarts with 5 in the winter and ends with no more than 40 in the summer. BMW has done tests on wear and oils with a HTHS of 3.5 will show no more wear than an oil with a higher spec. Once your at 2.9 HTHS things are great for Toyota motors but 3.5 should handle any high stress situation. The 3.5 High Temp/High Shear resistance spec can be achieved with a heavy 30w or light 40w. Synths aren't always better but if your going to use a heavy oil, you may be better off using one. They have a much wider natural viscosity spread. You can get 10w40s with no viscosity improvers and very high HTHS. Castrol 0w30, Amsoil 0w30, Mobil 0w40 (close to a 30w in use)and and heavier Mobile SUV 5w40 are all great oils for high stress situations. 5w and 10w oils are not thinner than other oils with higher first #s in use. A 0w40 and a 15w 40 are both 40w's at full temp. The difference is that the 0w flows better before the engine is up to temp. It is still never thinner than the a full 40w at operating temperature. Even in the summer a 0w40 is thicker on start up than a 50w is at operating temperature. W stands for winter and describes the flow when cold and doesn't at all relate to what happens in a warmed up engine if the shear spec is good. Obviously Bikes don't get driven in the winter and heat up quickly so the w spec doesn't mean as much. By the way, if you use any HM rated 30w with proper mantainance, the motor will still be running when the rest of the car is falling apart around it anyway. In the meantime you'll get more heat less power and poorer milaege from the 50w. I can understand giving up some of these things for protection but you're give up a few HP for nothing. My guess is that bike oils use a lot of ZDDP adds that will foul cats on cars. It's cheap but effective. Motor oils are now using organic adds like antimony as a replacement for some of the ZDDP. These don't show up in standard oil analysis and can skew testing. Some motor oils shouldn't be used in bikes because they have too much friction adds for the synchros. I wouldn't use RP for instance. I think that whether or not a bike oil has more adds in it depends more on the maufacturer than the intended use. Redline, Amsoil, and Delvac are car/truck oils that can work extremely well in bikes.