This is not an oil thread.

[Panzermann]

OK, I lied

But I thought a lot about this post, and then no one even read it because it was at the end of an oil thread. Which I guess is not a good place to put a post

But this is not REALLY an oil thread, or at least not in the apparently typical sense. The problem with oil threads is they don't seem to define all of the questions that need to be answered. They only answer one facet of the question, rather than answering basically all of the questions that need to be answered for someone as regards choosing "the lifeblood of you engine." This is why people when they see an oil thread. This webiste spends seemingly thousands of pages dealing with aspects of "the oil question." But, if you look in the Mbz owner's manual, there is a nice little graph with oil weight and temperature range. A single page. Simplicity. Isn't that partly what motivates many of us as regards these cars?

Anyways, it seems to me that
(a) We need a more organized approach to the oil questions and
(b) there is enough collective experience on the website to form a committee of sorts (?thousands?) to formulate recommendations regarding "the oil question."

I mean, if faceless nerds from SAE that weren't even a figment of their parents' imagination when most of our cars were built are coming up with rec's, maybe the old hands, or anyone for that matter, could post their recs for oil, and, in a single post (should I call it a "consensus statement"?), give the recs that anyone could be referred to, as well as link the posts to why these recs were made? I must say I would not count myself among the sages able to formulate these rec's, but I can propose a putative set of questions to be answered that would guide the discussion:

Focusing on 616/617/617 turbo engines:
1) Synthetic versus Dino?
2) Weight of oil: summer use (above 32 F?)
3) Weight of oil: winter use (below 32 F?)
4) Weight of oil: extreme summer use (above 100 F?)
5) Weight of oil: extreme winter use (Below 0 F?)
6) Do recommendations change turbo vs non-turbo?
7) Diesel-specific oils (i.e. C-rating) versus Gasoline-specified oils?
8) What qualifies as heavy use?
9) What qualifies as standard use?
10) Oil change interval synthetic (standard versus heavy use)?
11) Oil change interval Dino (standard vresus heavy use)?
12) Oil additives?

Maybe a group could come up with recommendations to answer this list, or people could develop their own specific answers to this list to refer people to. At least this would structure the discussion so that we don't continue to have an infinite variety of queries regarding various aspects of the "oil question," without dealing with the question as a whole. If anyone can copy and add additional critical questions to be answered, that would be good too, as generating a list of the questions is the first step to answering those questions in detail. Or generating even more oil threads.