Quote:
Originally Posted by regular guy
BMW-AG only allows 10W60 oil in this engine. BMW-NA seems to have broken ranks with BMW-AG as of August 2013 and now allows 0W30 - 5W40. No other region seems to be allowing thinner oil.
|
I'm still not at all sure that BMW NA oil supplement is meant to read as you interpret it.
My experience at VW/Audi was that the "importer" has very limited technical resources over and above that needed to support the dealer network - the majority of their time is spent on marketing, liaising with dealers etc....and I can see no reason why BMW NA would be any different.
Its highly unlikely that BMW NA could unilaterally decided to change the recommended oil for the S65 against the recommendation set out by BMW AG as they are most surely legally bound to basically do as they are told.
And even if they were permitted to make their own recommendations they would not have had the technical resources required to R&D this significant change in the first place.
Note that I strongly suspect that BMWs contract with Castrol does not allow then to recommend any oil other than Castrol (or BMW rebranded Castrol oil) so by extension BMW NA would not be able to recommend generic LL-01 oils sold by any manufacturer other than Castrol.
So that leaves us with few options:
1/ BMW AG authorized BMW NA to allow the option to use Castrol 5W-30 alongside the 10W-60 but left it out of the recent Dec 2013 list of approved oils. Not impossible I suppose....there is the whole ll-04 for Europe and LL-01 for the USA marlarkey.
2/ Its an admin cock up.
My money is still on 2/ though.