I recently bought a 5L bottle of Motomaster's Formula 1 Synthetic Oil (0W-20) as it was on sale for about $25. Along with the oil I bought a FRAM synthetic oil filter and I did the oil change. This is the first time I'm using synthetic oil in my rav so I've been keeping an eye on the oil level and what not. I've noticed that there is definitely more fuel being consumed for the same everyday trips I make. Is this a normal attribute? If it helps, when I normally get oil changes done at Midas they put in 5W-20.
Fortunately, on the USA side gas is getting cheaper. $2.33 per US gallon (equivalent in Canadian dollars is $2.75) in my town, or $1.94 per Imperial gallon. Did I get that right?
How are our Canadian friends doing for petrol prices?
I don't believe that switching from conventional oil to synthetic negatively impacts fuel mileage - I switched from conventional to synthetic for my motorcycle and there hasn't been any mileage change when riding under the same basic conditions before-and-after.
The down side for the US is a huge loss of $ to State and Federal government. About 44% of the price of Gas and Diesel is taxes. I suspect the next crisis will be in transportation infrastructure.
True but here in Kalifornia in my county in addition to the per gallon taxes there is sales tax of almost 10% When gas was around $4 per taxes were around a dollar of that.
I'm running TGMO 0W20 for the first time and no difference in economy or drive-ability in anyway, shape or form. Gas prices in my area of Southern Ontario are about 90 cents per litre. They could be lower (8%) if the HST wasn't applied to fuel (thanks Dalton McGuinty).
Unless you throw 15W-40 into the mix and drive at -40 degrees my bet is the average person couldn't measure the fuel mileage difference between oil viscosities and synthetic vs conventional or brand X vs. Y. It might be a few tenths of a mpg at most. Other factors relegate that to the noise or the "grass" as we used to say on our spectrum analyzers, i.e. undetectable.
Honestly, even I doubt that synthetic oil has anything to do with it, and the 0W-20 I'm using is less viscous than the 5W-20 I had before, which is supposedly better for fuel economy. I think it may actually be the weather, for the past week its been below 0C. I was just curious if anyone else has experienced worse mileage from switching to less viscous oils.
At least gas prices in Brampton are dropping! 98.9 cents/L as of today.