ZDDP is a friction fighter not some mirical additive that makes your engine run better. If you want an engine you can count on lasting... just use it:beer
Well, I'm going to go out on a limb here and give the horse another wack. I recently installed a Crower cam in a RAIII Pontiac and their recommendation for break-in oil was 30W non-detergent or race-only petroleum based and a bottle of Zddplus. They were quite specific when they stated "do not use muti-viscosity or synthetic due to the fact that it has detergent...................mulit-viscosity is fine after initial break-in..........". I have to wonder about some ot the older cars. I have friends who have original 20's, 30's, 40's, and 50's cars who use nothing more than straight 20W or 30W oil and always have, and they they don't seem to have any problems nor do they worry about it.
I'm going to go out on a limb here with my assesment but here it goes, and correct me if I'm too far off base. Not running the right chemicals increases the wear by a percentage. So for simplicity sake lets go with 20% more wear using the modern oils. That meens that a car that only sees 1,000 miles per year will only have 1,200 miles of wear on it. For all the trailer queens or "saturday in the summer" cars that's not going to be an issue. A daily driver seeing 20,000 miles per year will show 24,000 miles of wear on it. That meens after 4 years you're engine looks like it's seen 5 years worth of drive time. Thats assuming only 20% drop in oil efficiency and regular oil changes and tune-ups. Some people can get away with using the wrong oil for 2 years because in 20 years they drive as much as some people do in a summer. So far I've had my current car for 5 months and have driven it just under 90 miles. Our daily car goes about 70-120 miles per day. They can't be used as a good comparison for oils just because of the vast difference in their usage.
I don't think you can make such a broad assumption based on the "gradual wear" theory. You almost have to think of sufficient vs insufficient lobe protection as an on/off switch. For a given lobe/lifter hardness, spring pressure etc. there's a point at which a given oil can't do the job and a lobe begins to fail. Once it starts, it happens quickly. If the oil *is* doing its job, the gradual wear scenario takes over and the cam, lifters and the rest of the engine gradually wear out over a (hopefully) very long number of operating hours. Devon
That and relate back to valve spring pressure. Running regular pressure spring on relatively low lifts (judgement call? Less than .500"? Stock springs? o No: ) 20% drop in oil efficency I'm guessing is mostly if you are already pushing the limits of your oil's pressure resistances. There are a lot of old flat tappet engines out there still running 100,000+ miles without special additives added during the oil changes. That being said, my Skylark gets well over 10,000 miles a year on it. The Centurion used to (engine has around 60,000 on it now). And for a non-ragged edge engine, if I have to re-cam or re-bearing the engine every five or six years because the Oil, 70,000+ miles, I'll consider myself lucky because I'll more than likely break it before then ou:
... and that assumption is based on the inductive reasoning trap that what has always worked in the past will work in the future. The problem in applying that type of logic to this particular instance is that a significant variable has been introduced - the underlying basis of your statement assumes all oils are the same and always will be. This is not the case and is in fact the root information presented by Jim in this thread - that the change in oil chemistry being instituted TODAY may prove harmful to our engines TODAY and TOMORROW. If you can get YESTERDAY'S oil, which you know has worked, and can continue to use it today and tomorrow then your logic is valid.
Go to Lubrizols website to see the various challenges the new oils are confronting.Lubrizol sells the additives to the folks putting the oil in the plastic bottles.:TU:
Just to throw it out there, I wonder what detergent/ zinc levals are in motorcycle oils? Has any one looked into if motorcycle specific oils would offer the protection that were lookin for, verses modern motor oil?
Here you go.. wear test.. after proper break in with the right oils, with very typical performance valve spring pressures. http://www.joegibbsdriven.com/trainingcenter/tech/weartest.html JW
Why use a motorcycle oil? Motorcycle oils have higher levels of phosphorus/zinc for enhanced wear protection and the same high-temperature detergent technology for superior wear protection and engine cleanliness, even at elevated oil temperatures. Specifically motorcycle oils for aircooled engines are designed for very high localized oil temperatures and high overall oil temperatures, and typically have high flash points coupled with higher HTHS viscosities and lower noack% losses. As a whole, it would appear that all most motorcycle oils we tested have excellent anti-wear additive levels and most are not SM oils, but rather earlier SG, SH, or SJ rated. In a pinch, it should be fairly easy to find a motorcycle oil with any of these SG, SH, or SJ ratings at your local auto parts store when it may be more difficult to get Brad Penn or Swepco, without having it shipped to you. Please do remember that motorcycle oils typically have levels of Zn and P that will kill catalytic converters, so if you have one, either remove it first or use another oil, like Brad Penn or Swepco. Also, motorcycle oils are not as detergent as the aforementioned Brad Penn or Swepco, so you must change the oil much more often, even though the perception of being able to go longer because the oil costs more is a false one What makes Swepco 306 15w40 different from any other diesel oils? Harley's SYN3 didn't reduce the Zn or P, just supplemented it with the added boron. Similarly, Swepco's 306 has high levels of boron in addition to high levels of Zn and P, but in a non-synthetic product using highly refined paraffinic base stock similar to Brad Penn. Since we are discussing aircooled engines specifically, the highest levels of boron we had previously found, which is matched by the Swepco 306 15w40, was in Harley Davidson’s SYN3 motor oil. Boron, which is a supplemental zinc-free anti-wear additive, was present in these oils at levels six to ten times that of what is present in any reformulated SM or CJ-4 motor oil. It has been shown that boron works synergistically with the ZDDP and it's performance is tied to levels of the ZDDP. Additionally, Swepco is among the minority of lubricant manufacturers choosing to manufacture and market the newer CJ-4 rated oils along since previous CI-4 and earlier lubricants to address the requirements of older engines rather than forcing backwards compatibility in fleet service.
If new oils, with reduced zinc etc., are lacking in lubrication quality, why is it that engines are not being destroyed at a high rate? Wear falls into two categories - catastrophic and non-catastrophic. Ever since the creation of the API SL standard, there have been more catastrophic cam and lifter failures from poor boundary (metal-to-metal contact) lubrication as well as corrosive bearing wear in areas with hydrodynamic lubrication. One industry wide solution was the supplemental use of EOS or switching to a racing oil, CI-4 diesel oil, or the use of oils specifically designed for older engines, like Brad Penn. Some companies, ours included, looked towards coatings for bearings and friction surfaces to remediate the problem, or even cutting edge materials like sintered silicon nitride composite followers to remove the wear component all together. The other failure mode of engines with these poor performing lubricants was in non-catastrophic, measured in increased wear, as in bearings, cams, lifters, rockers, etc. all showing wear indicative of very high mileage or severe use in very few hours. The problem here is that most of the problems fall under the non-catastrophic, and may take years to surface. On a newer engine, like the M96, this wear may not cause any problems until the vehicle is out of the warranty period. Only when a catastrophic failure occurs, does an owner or shop take proactive measures to prevent this from happening again. All it takes is one catastrophic failure on a very high dollar engine to get a shop to make such a change, and until then, most shops continue to play Russian roulette whether they know it or not. The best preventative measure that can be taken with any engine is to change the oil often and use the best oil available, best meaning not expensive or full-synthetic, but rather an oil that is designed with high levels of anti-wear additives and the right balance of detergents. To see additional photos of both catastrophic and non-catastrophic cam and lifter damage, click here to see how prior to our discovery that the reformulation of motor oils was the primary cause of many of our problems how we were able to minimize these failures with our ceramic composite lifters, manufactured from sintered silicon nitride. Shown below are two examples of non-catastrophic wear, discovered in two M96 engines at time of disassembly, caused by long drain intervals and use of motor oils not necessarily formulated with the best wear performance in mind. Like mentioned earlier, the factory recommended drain intervals may be too long and recommended "approved" oils may be best for your engine: cam sprocket wear, 2.5 Boxster M96 engine, using Mobil 1 0w40 at factory recommended drain intervals, ~35,000 mi. cam chain tensioner pad, 2.5 Boxster M96 engine, using Mobil 1 0w40 at factory recommended drain intervals, ~75,000 mi
Oil comes from dead dinos so the shelf life is millions and millions of years, just like twinkies :bla: In reality it's probably a few years before it starts to seperate out. I would imagine that if someone put some in a clear glass bottle and then sealed it up air tight you could find the exact amount of time it takes to come apart. Figure it goes through processing, distribution, another round of distribution, and then sits on a store shelf for months before it's bought. So figure by the time you get it it's already 6 months to a year old.
... actually the currently accepted theory is dead plankton. Much smaller but greater concentrations - think 10 to the power of hugeness and then multiply by 6 I believe Mobil 1 states 5 years, unopened. I would think that once opened, under a year.
Oil is primarily liquid version of coal, and the bulk of the petroleum is from swamp lands from the Carboniferous era, 360 Million years ago to 300 Million years ago. When sea level dropped from a build of glaciers and broad swamp lands formed for millions of years. Poor ocean circulation kept the poles from warming, or more so kept the poles from cooling the equatorial regions and the tropical swamp lands went far to the north and far to the south of the equator. Plants would die and not decompose because the lack of oxygen from lack of current flow. Then more plants would die and fall on the previous plants for millions of years. Eventually compressed from the pile of dead plants as sea level rose and dirt piled on top, and the compression concentrated the hydrocarbons in liquid, solid and gas form. Bacteria that consumes oxygen forms quickly in stagnet water, and releases methane and such until the oxygen is consumed, then it's just dead water that very little can survive below the water surface. Swamps are modern versions of future coal/oil fields if they get buried.
You guys are great. I love how a debate about the effectiveness of modern oil turns into the process by which prehistoric matter decays :laugh: And oil does come from Dinos. Or at least it used to
