[Montanan]

There's definitely an interesting ... logic involved in heeding the advice of an armchair quarterback on the internet suggesting that you shouldn't heed the advice of armchair quarterbacks on the internet.

 

[Montanan]

In all seriousness, there's a little bit of a difference, but not really all that much of one. There's a massive amount of engineering and testing behind all design aspects of current vehicles, the vast majority of it proprietary, with the details only known to the automotive engineers involved. As car buyers, we need to have a measure of faith in that process, even though we don't know the rationales that are involved, and I do. I'm confident that the OEM battery will serve me well for the expected lifespan of a modern battery, and I'm confident that the oil weight specified will work well with my engine. But regardless of whether you share my confidence or not, none of us know why Subaru made those decisions. We don't know whether Subaru just cheaped out on the OEM battery, or whether they carefully right-sized it for our cars, and we don't know if a charging system designed for lead-acid batteries is as efficient or appropriate when used with an AGM battery. We also don't definitively know whether Subaru designed its engine specifically to perform best with 0-20 oil, or whether it's only recommending that because it offers marginally better mileage than 5-30 or some other weight. What we do know is that the forums are full of internet pundits who claim to be able to outguess Subaru's proprietary data on both those topics through mostly seat-of-the-pants guessing.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. 😉

 

[Montanan]

And of course there is one big difference between those two examples: installing a non-spec battery carries with it almost no short or long term risk to the car ... but that may.or may not be the case when using non-spec motor oil.

 

[Montanan]

And just think ... there are actually people out there who believe the 10,000 oil threads we already have are enough.

 

[Montanan]

There are two fundamental problems here, working in unison: one is that the internet has taught people to be fundamentally lazy when doing research, and the other is that human beings inherently just like to listen to themselves talk. Sometimes people who grouse the most about duplicate threads are the same ones who take the most delight in kicking dead-horse threads for days on end ... bringing up things over and over that often aren't even related to the original topic. It shows some disrespect to our broader community of readers, but realistically there's not really a whole lot that can be done.

But regardless, this is a topic for another sub-forum, not this one.

 

[Montanan]

As he has with many subjects, Stephan Pastis nailed this one:

 

[Montanan]

Please don't.

A few people think they're fun, but the rest of us die a little inside every time they see another one ...