[tequila318325]

Hello everyone, I have a question about what oil I should use in my E92 325i (N52). When I bought the car it came with 5w40 Shell oil, but when I did the first oil change I switched to Castrol 5w30 which BMW recommends for my model. After some time I noticed that with the 5w30 engine started to consume more oil ( around 1l for 7000 km ) so I needed to top it up once, mind you with 5w40 Shell I didn't even need to top up. The car is around 260k kilometers at this point and I have an oil change coming soon so I wanted your opinion on which oil is the best. Should I stick with what BMW recommends or go back to 5w40?
Thanks

[Daaaaaaaan]

Sometimes you won't have any way of knowing initial oil consumption if you, or someone, managed to slightly (500mL-1L) overfill the reservoir at an oil change. It's easy to overfill if you forget to loosen the oil filter before draining because that will retain ~1L of oil.

But you would have to quite a bit overfill it for it to show beyond "MAX" in the dash, so a lot of initial consumption can be "silent".

If you suddenly put in just the right amount of oil at an oil change to get it precisely to MAX, you would notice the oil consumption much faster.

1L/7000 km is perfectly normal.

Go with what meets BMW specs based on the oil bottle's label (LL-01 for that car.... maybe LL-01-FE). Sometime the same car has different recommendations in different countries. Dunno what Shell's or Castrol's formulation is in Poland: gotta check the label.

Strictly speaking in terms of 5w-30 vs 5w-40 and geography, I'd go with 5w-30 in Poland as it doesn't get thaaaaat hot in summer compared to the rest of europe.

[tequila318325]

Originally Posted by Daaaaaaaan

Sometimes you won't have any way of knowing initial oil consumption if you, or someone, managed to slightly (500mL-1L) overfill the reservoir at an oil change. It's easy to overfill if you forget to loosen the oil filter before draining because that will retain ~1L of oil.

But you would have to quite a bit overfill it for it to show beyond "MAX" in the dash, so a lot of initial consumption can be "silent".

If you suddenly put in just the right amount of oil at an oil change to get it precisely to MAX, you would notice the oil consumption much faster.

1L/7000 km is perfectly normal.

Go with what meets BMW specs based on the oil bottle's label (LL-01 for that car.... maybe LL-01-FE). Sometime the same car has different recommendations in different countries. Dunno what Shell's or Castrol's formulation is in Poland: gotta check the label.

Strictly speaking in terms of 5w-30 vs 5w-40 and geography, I'd go with 5w-30 in Poland as it doesn't get thaaaaat hot in summer compared to the rest of europe.

Talked to my mechanic he said that because of my car's mileage, I should be better off with 5w40, don't know who to believe

[335i54n]

0w40 or 5w40 pennzoil ultra platinum

[eljay]

Either one is fine if it meets the LL01 spec.