Cause for concern in 1GR-FE

[TontoFAC]

Higher viscosity oil

Living in Florida I’m not too worried about thinner viscosity oil in cold weather. I am considering using 5W-30 or even 10W-30 viscosity. Does anyone have any experience with using a higher viscosity oil in a 1 GR-FE engine?

 

[Jeremy556]

Living in Florida I’m not too worried about thinner viscosity oil in cold weather. I am considering using 5W-30 or even 10W-30 viscosity. Does anyone have any experience with using a higher viscosity oil in a 1 GR-FE engine?

Why?

This motor will run for a million miles on 0-20, and the VVTi system is sensitive to oil viscosity.

I just did an oil change this afternoon at 390k miles, with Mobil1 0w-20. Have done oil analysis many times, and recently replaced valve cover gaskets. Inside my engine looks better than many engines I have seen at 10 or 20k miles. Zero varnish, no sludge, minimal wear.

I run 90w in tcase and 140w in diffs, and am generally in favor of thicker oils given the choice.

 

[1000MPH]

I switched to 5W-30 Mobil 1 Extended Protection 5 years and 40,000 miles ago. I can’t tell any difference in performance or sound and annual mileage calculations are still approx 21MPG.

 

[Hungryhawk]

On this topic my 2004 Pilot was lubed with 0W-20 till 100,000 miles. It also had vvt oil pressure controlled which I remember kicked in at high rpm. No noticable performance change-except quieter. Sold it at 240,000 miles. No oil burning between oil changes ever.
I am in the camp that Toyota did everything possible to improve fuel efficiency. Not to improve engine durability long term, that is just a benefit for us.
In States with freezing weather the 0w-20 has cold start benefits.

 

[Bmnorm2]

Living in Florida I’m not too worried about thinner viscosity oil in cold weather. I am considering using 5W-30 or even 10W-30 viscosity. Does anyone have any experience with using a higher viscosity oil in a 1 GR-FE engine?

I switched to 5W-30 after powertrain warranty expiration at 60k miles. To me the engine is notably quieter. Maybe it’s just confirmation bias. I don’t have any objective data to prove it. Maybe the dBa is unchanged but the overall sound is less objectionable and more smoothed/damped to me.

My fuel economy seems unchanged. I still get 23-25 mpg on my 60 mile drive to and from work.

SAE considers 0W-20 good for -31*F to 86*F
And 5W-30 good for -22*F to 95*F

Where I live I see temps above 86* for a good 3+ months and typical lowest temps of 20*F for maybe a week or 2. 5W-30 makes more sense in my use case. If I lived in northern Vermont where negative temps is normal I would run 0W-20.