Switch oil, now zero burn?

[vafan13]

I'm guessing the dealer I bought my M5 from used Mobil 1 0w30 or 5w30, and in the ~7k miles before I switched, I had to add a liter every ~1750 miles. I replaced with Edge 0w40 and I've supposedly burned nada at about the point I'd normally get bugged to add a liter. Have others had this experience? I was hopeful of an improvement with the heavier weight, but burning nothing is beyond what I expected.

(and hopefully the oil level sensor didn't just coincidentally go bad)

[x35250]

Originally Posted by vafan13

I'm guessing the dealer I bought my M5 from used Mobil 1 0w30 or 5w30, and in the ~7k miles before I switched, I had to add a liter every ~1750 miles. I replaced with Edge 0w40 and I've supposedly burned nada at about the point I'd normally get bugged to add a liter. Have others had this experience? I was hopeful of an improvement with the heavier weight, but burning nothing is beyond what I expected.

(and hopefully the oil level sensor didn't just coincidentally go bad)

The oil weight makes a difference for sure.

Surprisingly, in my experience, the brand and additives seem to matter also. I was previously using MOTUL X-Cess 5w-40 and burned about 1 L every 700-800 miles. Yes, that's a bit on the high side, but my car probably wasn't broken-in perfectly by the past owner.

MOTUL is no slouch nor is it cheap.

I switched to Liquid Moly Molygen 5w-40 and currently have about 1,500 miles on the dash and burned about half a liter so far. It's the same exact weight as the MOTUL, but I seem to get about 25% of the oil burn rate. Not sure why, but it wasn't something I expected.

[technician117]

Yes, it's definitely possible. When I bought my 2013, I had no idea what oil was in the car but it burned about the same as you, roughly 1,500 - 1,700 miles before a quart was needed. I changed the oil to Mobil 1 0w-40 and immediately had some improvement in mileage, I think around 2,000 miles. By the next couple oil changes the interval between needing quarts increased even more. Now I'm only adding a quart once between oil changes. I add 1/2 a quart at a time. I theorize the change in oil brand and weight is the reason and that it took a few changes to flush out all of the "old" brand/weight.

[vafan13]

I'm now at 2400 miles since the oil change and *maybe* I've had it go dow ln one line of pixels. Or not, I don't remember exactly where it was last time.