Crabapple wrote:Cosmo wrote:I am driving a 2014 Subaru. towed a 1300 pound trailer 2400 miles recently. Oil seemed down a tiny bit. Usually uses none.
Is it normal for a car to use a bit of oil when towing?
I don't have much experience and may be imagining the oil consumption.
-Cosmo
Suby specs synthetic 0W20 oil in their current engines, with an oil change interval of 10,000K.
It used to be 5W30 with an interval of 6,000K between changes. I notice considerably higher oil consumption on my 2013 Crosstrek than vs my previous 2002 WRX wagon.
I think that light weight oil more readily blows past the rings at higher revs and stress of towing
10,000 for current Subaru engines is incorrect.
My 2015 Outback with the 2.5 cyl boxer requires I change my 0w20 every 6,000 miles per the owners manual and my dealership.
See my above post on Subaru oil consumption, the class action suit, and change interval.
As a side note, bmw just did the same thing Subaru did. They retroactively dropped the oil changer interval for 2014 and newer cars, even though my 2012 has the same engine. Rather than 16k between changes, bmw now requires 10k on 2014 and newer. But my old 2012 (which is out of warranty) still is at 16k between changes...
Sounds to me like many manufacturers were trying to stretch out schedules when using full synthetic oil, but found out they were going too far and walked things back a bit.