Modern internal combustion engines are not the same as those from 30 years ago. For starters, many of them are now designed to operate with electric motors to maximize efficiency. They run incredibly tight tolerances as a result, which has manufacturers like Toyota recommending increasingly lightweight oil mixtures. Every new Camry is filled not with 5W-30 or 0W-20 from the factory, but 0W-8—the thinnest oil on the market.
So, what happens when you run that in a 1991 Camry with more than 330,000 miles?
One owner is finding out in real time, uploading videos to the TooManyToyotas YouTube channel along the way. Older clips show the humble Camry competing in autocross, but a little more than a month ago, the host decided to test 0W-8 in the well-loved daily driver. The results have been fairly comical and, yeah, pretty predictable.
The 2.0-liter, 16-valve 3S-FE engine already had a thirst for oil before switching to the synthetic blend. Apparently, it drank a quart for every 500 to 750 miles driven. You could say this experiment was doomed from the start, then.
After driving just 530 miles with 0W-8 pumping through it, the tired four-cylinder burned 2.7 quarts of oil. That’s insane, especially when you consider the engine oil capacity on these engines is just 4.3 quarts. If the owner of this car switched to 0W-8 for good, they’d be replacing every drop of engine oil in less than 1,000 miles. I’m finding the genuine Toyota product for $11.50 a quart online when you buy a case of six. Ouch.
A 1991 Toyota Camry with the 2.0-liter engine and five-speed manual transmission averaged 26 mpg combined when new, according to fueleconomy.gov. For every 1,000 miles, then, it’s drinking about 38 gallons of fuel. AAA reports that the current national average fuel price is $4.536 per gallon of regular 87-octane, so between gas and oil consumption, it would cost more than $230 right now to drive this old car with 0W-8 if it never lost any fuel efficiency, which it most certainly has.
You might be thinking, “Wow, that’s just like pre-mixing gas for a two-stroke engine.” And you’d be right. The owner estimates that their Toyota consumed 3.5 ounces of oil for every gallon of fuel burned, which works out to a roughly 37:1 ratio. Mopeds usually run 40:1 or 50:1 mixtures.
1991 Camry 1 Month On 0w8 Oil Progress report.
There are plenty of more practical and useful experiments you could conduct, but I must say, I’m massively entertained by how poorly this one has gone. It’s still going on, too, as they try to reduce the oil consumption with B-12 Chemtool additive. They’re sending the oil off for analysis, so I’m especially intrigued to see what the lab reports back with.
Got a tip or question for the author? Contact them directly: caleb@thedrive.com