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If they did, there wouldn't be so many stores selling Fram oil filters and synthetic engine oil. I probably agree with Cabin Connection that you rarely ever come close to filling an oil filter with dirt, but in my books, if Fram is making filters that they know are inferior to the competition (albeit sufficient to our needs), buying their filters is helping to support them in that practice. I think they should all make smaller filtration capacity filters and charge less for them.

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Back in the days when I was a pup, everybody used 10W40 in the Winter, which now seems to be counter intuitive. It's cold here and that stuff had to have been like mud in the Winter.

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Amazingly the temperature was -59C (about -74F) with the windchill factored in.

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Wind makes US feel colder, but it won't affect your car's starting. Wind makes us feel colder because we lose heat faster (the same way we would if it were colder outside). But, if you're car's been sitting outside, it's already cold, and therefore won't lose any heat to the wind. Wind will only speed the rate at which a warm car cools down. It won't make a cold car colder.

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Below -35, most cars cannot reach operating temperature at all. Mine sits at about 1/4 on the temp gauge in such cold.

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I'd replace your thermostat. If the engine doesn't reach operating temperature, then neither should the coolant and the thermostat should remain nearly closed. (and that, in turn, should cause the engine to warm up)
(I've noticed that the repeated warming up and cooling down of the engine tends to "anneal" (or soften) the closing spring in automotive thermostats so that the water pump pressure will be enough to open them wider than they should be in cold weather. If your car doesn't warm up properly in cold weather, I'd replace the thermostat with a new one. You should notice a big improvement.)

(Although I'm not sure if you'd even need a "cooling system" for your engine with an outdoor air temperature below -35. You might be losing heat to the cold air as fast as your engine can generate it. Still, I had the same problem with a 1973 Plymouth Satellite, and replacing the thermostat helped a lot.)

THANKS TO GLOBAL WARMING (and a BIG THANKS), we haven't seen temperatures colder than -40 deg. F here in quite a while. When I was a kid, -40 was common, and colder than that was common too. For the past 10 years at least, I've noticed the winters have gotten gradually milder so that even -40 is becoming rare, thank GW.

People living in the South don't understand the "joy" that comes over us Canadians in March and April when the winter starts to give way to spring.

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Wind makes US feel colder, but it won't affect your car's starting. Wind makes us feel colder because we lose heat faster (the same way we would if it were colder outside). But, if you're car's been sitting outside, it's already cold, and therefore won't lose any heat to the wind. Wind will only speed the rate at which a warm car cools down. It won't make a cold car colder.

Yeah, I know that. I mentioned it as an aside. I knew what the wind chill effect since I was a little kid. Latent heat. The evaporation of water requires heat energy input, input from our own body, removing heat from us. When dry -35C air is blowing past our skin, the heat loss is substantial.

I'd replace your thermostat. If the engine doesn't reach operating temperature, then neither should the coolant and the thermostat should remain nearly closed. (and that, in turn, should cause the engine to warm up)

The problem is exactly as you mentioned later.
When -35C air is going into the engine and -35C air going through the radiator and around the engine block. The cooling system is designed to cool the car at 110F or more, considering there are sometimes weeks of temperatures like that in some places, whereas there are only days of temperatures at -40C, it makes sense the cooling system is balanced more for hot weather. After 10-15 minutes of sitting, the block is almost fully cold again. It is impossible for the fuel to supply enough heat to counter-act heat being lost by the temperature. More heat is moving away from the engine than is being provided by the fuel.
Several cars with known good thermosdats all experienced the same behavior. When heat loss exceeds heat gain, the thermosdat simply cannot control the engine temperature. All these cars fully warm up at temperatures up to -30 or so, beyond that it takes a stupidly long time to warm up, if it happens at all.

It's the same deal as people telling me to warm up my car when it's -30C outside. Yeah, i'll let it run for a good 10-15 minutes, but if I want it to get warmed up, I will burn a full tank of gas waiting. At idle, there is simply not enough fuel (and resulting heat) to balance the heat being lost. Much colder and it applies all the time. The ONLY things one can do when it is THAT cold out (we tend to have 2 or 3 days below -40 and several days below -35 each winter) is suck it up and realize it is just impossible for engines in Canada to last as long as in California.
The whole deal is worse for more modern engines, which are more efficient in getting kinetic energy from the fuel, as opposed to heat.

People who have never experienced temperatures of -45C and a windchill almost into the -60s really are missing out

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kodak, read what I posted again. It said if the "preferred oil" in the manual is 5W-30, then to use 5W-30. My manual says (2000 Dodge Dakota) the PREFERRED OIL is 10W-30. So that's what I use. Someone tell me why I should NOT go with what the engineers who designed my vehicle explicitly specify in the manual.

My whole point is that Davids made a blanket statement that 5W-30 is always better than 10W-30, and I want some kind of backing to that. The advice that *I* can find, including calling the dealer, is that you should use what the manual specifies...period. And mine says 10W-30.

I don't change the oil myself in my other vehicle, it's very specific with it's requirements so it's not worth discussing it... it gets synthetic and for what I consider good reasons

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Considering there are people whose specific job it is is to measure friction and fluid dynamics of newly designed systems, one should go with the manual. Electrical and mechanical engineering are pulling me equally, I still don't know which to do