Best Oil for Hemi "Tick"

[A4Owner]

Is there a generally regarded "best" oil for the 5.7 engines? I know for Audi you should run (not walk) from what the dealer's use and only ever use Motul 8100, amazing oil that's also cheaper than the more well marketed brands. Anyways, any pro star hemi heads out there that swear by a particular brand and grade of oil? I heard going thicker viscosity is the answer, but I really don't agree with that. Don't you just want a "better" oil that's the right grade that Ram says to use so that it can get up into the roller pins?

 

[HSKR R/T]

You are going to get a lot of opinions on this.

Personally, I use custom blended "boutique" oil from www.bndautomotive.com he has been blending oil for Hemi's since 2007 when he owned a Charger. He also makes coolant, trans fluid, fuel additive(diesel and gas), grease, gun oil, metal protectant......

 

[stevj]

Yep.


Steve

 

[A4Owner]

Pennzoil Ultra Platinum 5w20 comes up a lot. Anyone pound the you-know-what out of their hemi, or worse, sit idling for days!!!! and have no issues after putting in Pennzoil Ultra Plat?

 

[raygun9]

Im surprised redline doesnt come up on this forum as much. My gen4 I only ran redline never had a lifter issue or tick but my gen5 I just roll with Pennzoil Ultra Platinum 5W20, getting cheap in my old age.

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[A4Owner]

Which grade and model of Redline?

 

[A4Owner]

Never mind just saw it.

 

[raygun9]

Which grade and model of Redline?

For redline I ran 0w30 in winter and 5w30 in summer

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[A4Owner]

And curious why not the 5w20 year round?

 

[raygun9]

And curious why not the 5w20 year round?

There was a lot of info on running a thicker oil for better lubrication of the lifters. I will say the engine ran really smooth at that weight, but I was over the powertrain warranty when I was running it. Now I'm still under the powertrain warranty so I do what the manufacturer recommends which is the 5W20.

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[A4Owner]

I gotcha. Yeah my own take is yes the thicker grades probably do "smooth out" engine noise overall. But the way I understood the lifter issue was that you want the thinner grade. Note: if I were doing HD use I'd go heavy for a cycle for sure. I believe the issue is that when these things idle oil pressure goes down a lot. That oil pressure reduction is what really harms those lifter pins. Note: I am not a tech and could be totally wrong.

 

[RAL]

The issue with lifters, when it arises, is a defect in the metallurgy. If your truck has an issue with the lifters, and assuming you are changing the oil and filter appropriately, there is no magic oil that will fix the issue. This doesn’t mean that running oil past the appropriate interval won’t cause problems, but people put far too much emphasis and time into thinking about motor oil brand. My 2020 specifies a 5w20. That is what I use, full synthetic because I believe there are benefits to full synthetic, particularly where the manufacturers have pushed the viscosity towards the thin end of the spectrum to achieve CAFE compliance. But whether it is Mobil 1, Penzoil, Castrol, etc. is likely of zero consequence if the viscosity is as specified by Ram and the oil is kept full and clean. Even semi synthetic or synthetic is likely to make little difference if the oil is clean and full. Everything else with all due respect, is guys buying into the marketing or overthinking the issue.

 

[beetlespin]

Whatever full synthetic the dealer puts in.

 

[A4Owner]

I totally agree with that clean and full comment. I pound the you-know-what out of my Audi. Full throttle take offs several times per drive and zero issues with the turbo, interior of the engine is crystal clean after 80k miles and zero and I'm talking zero MILs. So this b/s of keeping the oil in for 20k miles and not "revving up" the engine is a joke. That's sales speak...if I floor my engine it will "hurt" it in some way.

 

[Willwork4truck]

I’ve read and watched a lot of supposed “fixes” for this, it seems to be there are basically 2-2.5 differing camps. The first is the “use a thicker and/or better quality oil” and the second/second and a half is kinda’ a mix of #1 and “change oil more often and limit idling”.

For every proposed fix there’s an armchair YT or some forum expert that says to do the opposite.

This issue has been going on for about as long as the motor has been around.
I’m not saying that certain owners haven’t gotten some relief by using a thicker, better oil and changing it more often, (my neighbor with a 2016 and 115K miles who routinely goes down to 0% life on the dash counter and yet is upset over the tick would be a reason to not follow that path), just that there’s no definitive fix that I have seen or read about.
Probably will get flamed over my opinion.

 

[CalvinC]

My thoughts have always been to not monkey around with oil viscosity as spec'd by the mfr, but rather to invest in the best full synthetic motor oil you can, and run no more than 5k miles.

For the more obsessive, listen to your engine, and smell & analyze (Blackstone) your oil at various intervals. This will help you further dial in the right recipe for your own engine.

Not everyone will agree, but being familiar with engine builders & machinists and their work, viscosity matters and is not arbitrarily chosen.

 

[silver billet]

Redline 5w-30 is a good choice, but RL is no longer the favourite. Seems that HPL is the new best-in-class oil to beat and its priced accordingly. You can probably run the standard PCMO but if you want even more protection and runtime then the "premium plus" or "no vii" or "supercar" flavours will do that for you. There is an experiment on BITOG right now where one member has run HPL for 30,000 miles to date, all backed by UOA's and pics of the interior of the engine (which is a 3.6 pentastar), it is completely spotless in there which shows the incredible cleaning performance of all HPL's oils.

I'd also suggest a 0w-30 or 5w-30, the 20 weight is there for fuel efficiency gains only, not protection.

Automotive Lubricants

Advanced Lubrication, Inc.

www.advlubrication.com

 

[SD Rebel]

Alright, so we are all going to do this then?

0W-20 full synthetic every 5K miles is your best bet for longevity on these engines.

There are some engines that will have bad pins that lead to lifter failure, that's going to happen to 5-10% of these engines regardless of what oil you use. But during the most critical time of engine lubrication, the cold start, you want that lubrication to reach those pins as soon as possible.

 

[HSKR R/T]

Redline 5w-30 is a good choice, but RL is no longer the favourite. Seems that HPL is the new best-in-class oil to beat and its priced accordingly. You can probably run the standard PCMO but if you want even more protection and runtime then the "premium plus" or "no vii" or "supercar" flavours will do that for you. There is an experiment on BITOG right now where one member has run HPL for 30,000 miles to date, all backed by UOA's and pics of the interior of the engine (which is a 3.6 pentastar), it is completely spotless in there which shows the incredible cleaning performance of all HPL's oils.

I'd also suggest a 0w-30 or 5w-30, the 20 weight is there for fuel efficiency gains only, not protection.

Automotive Lubricants

Advanced Lubrication, Inc.

www.advlubrication.com

This is what I've been saying about oils and BITOG for a while. It always comes down to flavor of the week type thing. Someone finds a new type of oil and starts posting UOAs, and others start jumping on the ship. Next thing you know it's the best thing to ever happen to engine lubrication, until the next oil comes along. Then then all of a sudden the previous oil isn't as good as it was being made out to be and you should really use this new oil if you don't want to destroy your engine

 

[RAL]

If you value your warranty, I would stick with the viscosity that is specified by Ram. For my year it is 5w20. Neither Ram nor any other major manufacturer is going to risk engine damage and the associated negative effects on customer retention by specifying the wrong viscosity oil, even with the influence of CAFE standards. Now I am not saying that an 0w30, for example, would actually cause an issue, but if there is an engine issue, and Ram asks for service receipts to verify that the truck was maintained, and the oil used was not the viscosity specified in the owner's manual, then you are giving them an out on coverage of the repair.

As far as the BITOG goes, interesting to visit over there once in a while but classic example of over-thinking things. HPL oils, like Amsoil and other boutique brands, are very good but also complete and total overkill for the average street driven vehicle and a complete waste of money to boot.