Lots of folks do things that they shouldn't, and get away with it. Nowhere is that more evident than this subject. You should be using a oil with low detergent, and a zinc content of 1300-1400 ppm. Rotella T, in every form, is limited to 1200ppm of zinc by the EPA, has been since 2006. Not saying you won't get away with running it, especially in a roller cam or well broken in flat tappet engine, with stock type camshaft ramp rates. Because the simple fact is that tons of guys will not pay $8 or more for a quart of oil. So they pick up the gallon jug of Rotella at walmart. And there are no mass engine failures because of it. Better than running the house brand 10-30 in your flat tappet hi perf motor for sure.. but don't be confused here. Rotella is not comparable to aftermarket High performance flat tappet oils, from Gibbs or Penn. I just had the issue come up, and went back and revisited all the updated data. ---------- Break in oil is where folks run into trouble.. in that case, it is critical to use a proper flat tappet cam break in oil, my personal choice is the BR series form Joe gibbs, I use the BR-30 which is actually a 5-30 oil. Buick motors need a low viscoisty oil to flow quickly to the cam bearings at start up. Because of the smaller diameter, Higher point load bearing issue there, they don't have the "room" that other engines have for error. But there are several other good products on the market also, all specfic break in oils. I will agree that better to have clean 1200ppm oil than dirty 1400 ppm stuff, but really, if it's come to that, maybe it's best to sell the hot rods and start filling the mattress with your money. Most of us won't spend enough for a whole year of oil changes on our hot rod, to buy a decent meal for 2 at a nice restaurant. Even with that "expensive oil". So it's important to keep our perspective here. And I have perspective.. I use the HR2 conventional Joe Gibbs in my hot rods, and recommend it for my customer's cars. No need for the $12/QT synthetic, there is no advantage to that vs the conventional oil for 99% of us. I use Walmart store brand 10-30 in my LS motors in my GM SUV's. Both those LS 5.3's have massive cold engine piston slap regardless of what oil is in it.. and it's cheap, and it works. :laugh: JW
PS.. I was a committed Rotella user back in the early 2000's.. used dozens of cases of the stuff in customers motors that we put thru the dyno, and in cars done in the shop. I first noticed in one motor that we took the valve covers off on the dyno, that the oil was a little foamy. My dyno guy said he saw that all the time with Rotella. That lead me to look for an alternative oil, which was right when Brad Penn was getting going, and the epa hammer came down on the big oil companies like Shell.. I used that Brad Penn product till 2010, when I switched to the Gibbs products. Just so you know, I am not a diesel oil hater.. I used the stuff for many years, but found better products as time went by. JW
It is getting harder to keep up with some of the formulation changes. I know that In an earlier post the "green" oil was mentioned. Even this gets confusing because my original performance oil of choice was Kendall GT-1 20w-50 racing oil. It was definitely green when they started selling it. Now if you buy the same weight in Kendall racing oil,it looks like regular valvoline racing oil. I am in a spot because I am maintaining trucks and equipment and that is when I started putting the shell in all my high mileage vehicles. As stated,I do not use it in a "race" engine. I think a lot of people would have problems with Rotella in colder weather because they probably would not allow the initial warm up as you would in heavy equipment. I am sometimes buying it in 55 gallon drums because I use a lot of it. I drive my local friend here nuts because I put together an old 350 Chevy with a used cam a couple years ago for a plow truck. He is an awesome machinist, but he can't get it into his head that a good 300,000 cam is better than a new junk one. I used to work in a temperature controlled room with gauge blocks measuring the differences in steel at different temperatures. Manufacturers will cut corners in every way possible to save a buck. In this case........Is it really the case of oil that ruined your new cam or was it just like the 305 Chevys in the 80's that had cam failures in the new trucks? I have not lost a cam with this oil and I have yet to lose an engine with it.
