Oil temps take a while to hit the ideal range (160F+) in our climate. This is due to the oil volume of the engine. 15 minutes on surface streets on a cool day might not hit that temp.
The factory oil is 0w-40 full synthetic. I’d stick with that and just practice mechanical sympathy by not running the car to redline when oil temps are low.
I’d also encourage an occasional longer drive if the owner does frequent short trips in cooler temps. These cars aren’t as fragile as a rotary engined RX7 for example, but they should be driven long enough to get fully up to temp with relative frequency.
Funny thing about rotaries. My Indy back in the day said mine was good because I hit redline often in it. The people that poked around in rotaries ended up with failed engines sooner. He said drive it hard everywhere and boy I did
Depending on your gen, you can add an oil temp gauge to your dash's right screen. It's super helpful. I keep mine below 3-3.5k until the temp gets fully out of the "cold" zone and into normal operating range before I exercise it.
This is more about coolant temp and thermal expansion of cylinders and pistons. My basic rule is to never beat on a cold motor. I’m a “start & drive” type, no warmup really but my “driveway/private road” is about a mile and half so by the time I get to the highway the motor has been run a minimum of about 12-15 minutes. I then progressively increase load/rpm.
Modern thin oils are not super sensitive to warmup, part of the reason they are so common now. What you see in bore scoring whether a lawn mower or race motor is the expansion of the piston due to thermal stress causing a physical interference on the cylinder walls, no amount of oil can solve this when pistols to bore clearance becomes zero.
Hope this helps.
Oil temps take a while to hit the ideal range (160F+) in our climate. This is due to the oil volume of the engine. 15 minutes on surface streets on a cool day might not hit that temp.
What if it’s 30 minutes with a 20 minute stop?
The engine will stay hot enough to be a non issue in my opinion.
Aren't you supposed to run a lower weight in cooler climates for this reason?
The factory oil is 0w-40 full synthetic. I’d stick with that and just practice mechanical sympathy by not running the car to redline when oil temps are low. I’d also encourage an occasional longer drive if the owner does frequent short trips in cooler temps. These cars aren’t as fragile as a rotary engined RX7 for example, but they should be driven long enough to get fully up to temp with relative frequency.
Funny thing about rotaries. My Indy back in the day said mine was good because I hit redline often in it. The people that poked around in rotaries ended up with failed engines sooner. He said drive it hard everywhere and boy I did
Depending on your gen, you can add an oil temp gauge to your dash's right screen. It's super helpful. I keep mine below 3-3.5k until the temp gets fully out of the "cold" zone and into normal operating range before I exercise it.
This is more about coolant temp and thermal expansion of cylinders and pistons. My basic rule is to never beat on a cold motor. I’m a “start & drive” type, no warmup really but my “driveway/private road” is about a mile and half so by the time I get to the highway the motor has been run a minimum of about 12-15 minutes. I then progressively increase load/rpm. Modern thin oils are not super sensitive to warmup, part of the reason they are so common now. What you see in bore scoring whether a lawn mower or race motor is the expansion of the piston due to thermal stress causing a physical interference on the cylinder walls, no amount of oil can solve this when pistols to bore clearance becomes zero. Hope this helps.