Unfortunately with the tolerances these engines are built with, you cannot do that. What i mean is, if it were a situation where you had to lets say, add a quart, it probably wouldn't affect the engine, but the MDS system doesn't play nice with "common grade" oils.
It's a misconception that today's engines are built with tighter tolerances, we just went thru this discussion of this on the P15-D24 site and the old flat head 6 actually has slightly tighter specified tolerances than the 5.7 Hemi.
But you hit on the real key issues, the MDS is picky. My SIL had the oil changed by some quicky oil change place and his Ram started getting error codes. Related to VVT and such. He took it to the dealer and they quoted him some stupid price to replace a bunch of hard parts. He called me and I talked to a bud of mine that is an expert mechanic and not someone who slept in a Holiday Inn Express. First thing he did was shoot me the TSB on this issue and step one is to change the oil and filter and retest. Turns out the oil change place had used a different and smaller oil filter than specified and who knows what oil they actually put in it. Once my SIL changed the oil and filter himself all was good. So we learned several things, do your own oil changes, that dealership is a rip off, and it's good to know people that actually know something.
