It was the same for my car last oil change, the paperwork said 5w-30.

That is an option in the manual IIRC.

I assumed they put it in since my car is lowered, wheels, exhaust so thinking I probably drive it harder than I actually do.

I thought the manual said to use 5W-30 when 0W-20 is not available?
Maybe the whole oil starvation issue is causing them to go safer and put in 5w-30.

oil starvation happens when the oil pickup cant suck in as much oil as it needs, the grade of oil would make no difference, either the pickup is clogged or under a high G maneuver the oil is pushed away and thats when issues arise, the viscosity of the oil wont help much if at all, plus a thinner oil would be safer theoretically (easier to flow past the clogged pickup).

On gen 1 cars it was pretty conclusively proven that 0w-20 with an oil cooler was the most ideal for a track car seeing hot temps, I run track days on 0w-20

Hooked up 100shot of nitrous and going to Mexico soon

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How'd it go?

Ran a 13sec flat in the 1/4 mile and didn’t blow the welds on my intake

Hope the car still has its passenger floorboard.

Ha, where was this proven?! Gen 1 didn’t need an oil cooler, gen 2 doesn’t need one either..

Thinking about swapping in that 9spd manual trans conversion I saw on an eclipse. My tab at Harry’s runs deep.

lol by the numerous people who actually know how to drive the car hard enough to get the oil too hot :search:

I've been involved in most of those discussions, I don't need to search. None have suggested to me (certainly haven't "proven conclusively") that 0w20 with an oil cooler was "most ideal".
FWIW my '17 got up to 275F indicated (reportedly this is ~255F sump temp) every single session for 5 years, around 50 or so track days, +80k street miles. The car never needed an oil cooler, but I did run high(ish) 3.7cP HTHS 5w30 Redline oil during track season.

I cant find the thread/threads but i recall when i initially boosted my 1st gen i was looking into oils and came across quite a few very detailed posts by teams that raced the twins, I recall seeing oil temps vs pressures over a time plot showing 0w-20 retaining the least heat over time which is why it was recommended over a heavier weight oil which retained more heat, all of the oils got too hot seeing pressure drops which is why the general consensus was 0w-20 with an oil cooler. Even on the street after doing some hard a** driving at only 300ish wheel I would see my oil pressure bounce around 3-6 psi at idle and oil coming in around 260f and up. Ive never seen below spec around 11-14ish at idle with the cooler and temps stay around 200f tops, cheap insurance if you ask me especially if you drive the car hard and more or less a no brainer if boosted especially turbo. Heat kills the oil, poor oiling kills the engine as numerous people have come to find out with these cars :bellyroll:

I've been in all of these oil temperature/pressure conversations, and there's never been any "general consensus" that 0w20 with an oil cooler is the way to go. Oil cooler is a waste of time, waste of money, and greatly increases likelihood of oil leaks. At stockish power levels, oil temps are well under control and no oil cooler is needed. I would recommend good 30-weight synth for track usage tho...

Question: what do you think is "too hot" for decent synthetic oil?

So at idle you were seeing 3-6 psi, at 260F oil temp? OK but I've never heard anyone report oil pressures that low at idle for any oil at any oil temp. I mean if you have water for oil, maybe?

Adding failure points for no reason is not "cheap insurance". Engines have been lost, *cars* have been lost due to leaking and failing aftermarket oil cooler plumbing.

Oil analysis has shown that 275F and much higher temps doesn't do anything to the oil at all. Poor oiling delivery does kill engines though, and if you research engine failures with these cars you will find that having an oil cooler or not isn't a factor at all.

ehh, ive seen people with more time on the track than both of us combined
say they run 0w-20 after countless tests and they all seem to agree that an oil cooler is beneficial if running the car hot for long periods of time.. such as on the track. Oil cooling is only a failure point if its done poorly, would you say that the oem oil/water cooler on the 2nd gens is a failure point? why would subaru design the engine with a better *barely better* and more complex oil cooling system than before if its not beneficial?

All these cars dying from oiling issues that ive seen come from a clogged pickup which = less or no oil delivery. No oil pressure has has a similar but less drastic effect, loss of volume of oil through oil delivery leads to :brokenheart: lol.

My low oil pressure incidents all happened on motul 300v 0w20 which went away after the oil cooler when I was around 300ish whp, new built engine likes motul xcess gen 2 5w40 and ive had the oil cooler on the whole time so I cant say what it would be at in terms of oil pressures. Actually i think im going to give it a try and gather some data for myself but all I can conclusively say with an engineering background is that viscosity is the most important factor for a lubricant and viscosity is affected by temperature, too hot = too thin, too thin means an unhappy engine