I just changed the oil on my ek for the first time and didnt know which oil to buy since i just bought the car/ its got 107,xxx.

I went with 10w40 (autozone workers recommendation) and after the oil change, the car feels heavier/slower!! When I push down on the gas pedal, it doesn't give as much power as before!!!

Can the viscosity have this effect???
Should i have gone with 5w30???

 

5w30 or 10w30, not 40. Not sure about how it affects your car.

 

it could. how much oil did you put in?

did you just gas up by chance as well?

how much of a speed decrease would you say from before?

 

Auto zone workers said it a high milage car so 10w40 would be better!! IT DOESN'T SEEM LIKE IT!!!

It's just when i step on the gas it has NO ***** and seems the motor is just not pulling!!!

I put in 4 quarts including the filter and dipstick is at exactly full.. not over the second hole at all!

 

so it doenst go at all while floored? do rpms climb? if you had to think of normal as being 100 percent...what do you think percentage wise is the fspeed decrease? 10? 20? 50?

didi you just gas up?

 

Maybe about 40-50% decrease...

I'm gassing it and it's not pulling as much as before...?
It feels like the car is too heavy for the motor!! =[

I'm not sure what gassing up means....?
Is it like filling up the gas tank or stepping on the gas all the way.... ?

Should i just change it again with 5w30???

 

gas up means fill the gas tank with gasoline.

you say it feels heavier...how much heavier? on a scale of 1 to 10...1 being grandma slow and 10 being what you think the car should be at for speed...how much speed did you lose.

ill jump to what im trying to get at. if it is a slight variation from what you remeber..then change out your oil with the correct grade to see if that helps.

if it is a big difference then i might suspect another problem.

 

is this a vtec motor? vtec wont engage unless the tempature is normal. no vtec would feel slower at higher rpms

 

Thanks for the help, I'm just gonna go with changing the oil to 5w30. :]

 

yep change to 5w30, that might help and like he said if that changes it i think i know the problem.

 

I would be very surprised if changing back to 5w30 from 10w40 fixed that problem. Keep us posted, I'm curious.

 

i believe it will fix the problem...because the 10w40 is too thick....possibly making the oil pump work a little harder to push the oil up to the head and other places to lubricate...
cant give you any techy type of explanation...but i used 10w40 on my stock d16 motor before and it did feel sluggish..(more than before)

 

honda, as well as gm and ford are recommending changing to 5-w20. for better fuel mileage and engine life. im changing the oil in my ek tomorrow so ill post on how it goes. but i would never go over 5w30 in a civic. btw make sure your only using 3.5 quarts, anymore is too much and may destroy your seals.

 

I wouldn't think that switching to 10w40 would make that much difference maybe 20w50 though. I run mobil 1 5w30 in my hx w/ 180k miles. sohc is not known for having a lot of power. You can switch back to 5w30 and see but it sounds like the issue is somewhere else.

 

yes it will. my brother had a 96 celica that he raced and they recromended him 10,40w so he went with 20-50w lol and it took almost 20 seconds for it to get to redline while in neutral. and it slowed down all the moving parts in the engine so it took more gas to take off from a light than before and he went to 5-30w and holly **** it felt like he put nos in lol. so yes the viscoty will slow down a little motor like this.