Posts Made By: Rod Kaufman

I took my wife's '09 Toyota Matrix into a dealership for an oil, filter and tire rotation along with the fix for the acceleration issue. Up till this point, the dealership had been filling the crankcase with 5-20 motor oil, as specified in the owner's manual. Now, I've found they changed the grade to 5-30 so I called the service adviser and he tells me Toyota changed the oil-grade requirement six months ago from 5-20 to 5-30 and apologized for "misinformation" being disseminated by Toyota regarding the oil requirements of their '09 models. I'm going to call the Toyota 800 number next week and ask for an explanation because this seems unusual to say the least.
My owner's manual calls for either a 0-20 or 5-20 grade and notes maximum fuel economy occurs with the 0-20 variety and states nothing about the 5-30 grade. Can using a 5-30 grade hurt my engine? Can using a 5-20 grade in an engine that requires 5-30 hurt the engine? I note many newer vehicles are designed to use 5-20 grades so I didn't think it was too unusual that my owner's manual specified it. I live in California and the climate is generally mild so I doubt whether the difference between the 5-20 and the 5-30 is critical but I don't really know.
Any thoughts about it?...

Well, not quite but still:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-laser13-2010feb13,0,7891734.story

Anybody catch the History Channel's week long documentary on the second world war in color and in high definition?
It's a superb collection of documentary films, restored and some of it has never been seen before on TV. I like the way they shift back and forth between the war in Europe and the war in the Pacific. The sacrifices and 12000 or more American dead per month and the public consternation about it. A fascinating collection of films from the archives...

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2009/10/12/nr.morris.limbaugh.nfl.cnn
Rush said pro football is a fight between the bloods and the crips? Geez..

Unmanned helicopters, friend vs foe identification on individuals, state of the art anti-tank missile defense systems:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1254861903842&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Point and click...

The good, they die young:
http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2009/09/13/israeli-pilot-son-of-columbia-astronaut-killed-in-crash/

More than 27000 people on CNN's straw poll think the Apollo moon landing was a lie:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/07/17/moon.landing.hoax/index.html
The contagion continues to spread...

Cute, the chick's not too bad, either.

Overheard on the morning commute:
Jay Leno: Jail has changed Paris Hilton. She's a changed woman. She now has sex with only with the truly needy!

I'm glad to learn they found the missing boyscout alive and well.
I'm not surprised he got lost and I'm dismayed his father said he'd trust the same scoutmasters to take him out again.
Last month, I observed from Mt Pinos when scout troop after scout troop arrived after dark on a mountain top nearly 9000 feet high. The scouts, coming from a warmer environment in the city, had to put on warm clothing when they arrived with several wandering off the trails to do it. A scout master yelled "stay on the trail" and one kid yelled back "Why?"
There were probably fifty kids or more, eager to play in the snow with a relative few scoutmasters to oversee them. I think it's amazing some kid didn't wander off and get lost on the mountain. I've seen it happen with adults on Pinos with mountain search and rescue recovering the body(s).
I've got a daughter so I don't have to worry about her getting lost but If I had a son he wouldn't be off with these bozos unless I was there to oversee the zoo...