I've been getting the 10w-30. Pressures are a little bit lower than when I was using the Rotella 15w-40. But not much. One or two ticks down if that.
Hey, we haven't had a good oil war in a while...
- Thread starter Christo
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I have 60K miles on my rebuild, I have used either 20W50 VR-1 or 15W50 Mobil-1 exclusively since break-in. The engine runs smoothly and only uses about a pint of oil every 1500 miles. I use that weight at the recommendation of my machinist who said it was needed due to the extra (.0030) clearance necessary because of the huge main journals on the crankshaft.
I have heard all the reasons why I should NOT be using that weight of oil, but I'm sticking to the machinist's recommendations and it has been working quite well.
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I would always go with machines that built the engine. That engine may no longer be OEM and the builder should know best.
VR-1 10W-30?
I would either run that or the 20W-50 if the oil pressure looked low once the engine warms up.
I just changed mine with 5W-40 Mobil 1 from synthetic 5w30 b/c my oil pressure looked on the lower side to me this summer, that's a roller cam engine though, otherwise I'd use the VR-1 for flat tappets. It's so inexpensive, and at Walmart. I couldn't believe it.
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It was never the oil. The cam issue is from soft cam core and low quality soft lifters. Cams going flat didn't effect OE cams or european cars. The issue was prevalent with replacement cams and lifters becasue they were made overseas in factories with less experiece with metalurgy. So run what ever oil you want and if you upgrade your cam, user a quality roller cam and qulaity roller lifters. The oil in the 70's was much lower quality than it is now but the metalurgy was better.
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This is the camshaft in my COOP 455 with the matchingCOMP Cam roller rackers. How do you think this cam will hold up?
I have the flat tappet version of that cam (purchased directly from Jim Bounds), it has 60,000 miles on it. Yours should hold up just fine.
This is the camshaft in my COOP 455 with the matchingCOMP Cam roller rackers. How do you think this cam will hold up?
This is the camshaft in my COOP 455 with the matchingCOMP Cam roller rackers. How do you think this cam will hold up?
I have that cam too, specifically b/c I didn't want to have to worry about what oil to use lol. If you have the 455 with the concave intake, then it's not using the comp cams lifters b/c those lifters don't have the angle cut top. It's more likely Morel lifters flipped around so the tie bars are facing outward. That way they clear the intake. That bit of info was from Jim B, I picked his brain while building my engine.
Also be aware that cam requires a special distributor driven gear. It calls for a melonized gear although those will wear out eventually. Another option is the composite gear from BOP Engineering, which is what I went with b/c melonized gears at the time were unobtainium.
The nice thing about the composite gear is that it doesn't need the oil galley plug drilled to squirt oil on the distributor gear as the melonized gear requires. Which is just lucky for me, b/c my engine builder didn't remember using a drilled plug there. So it may or may not be getting oiled. With the composite gear it doesn't matter.
What I'm getting at is, you might want to check the wear on your distributor gear once you get a few 1000 miles on it. If you start to see movement at your rotor, then the gear is wearing and you should replace with a composite gear.
Has the poor quality metallurgy been resolved?
If I were rebuilding an engine today, I'd measure the cam and keep the lifters organized and if everything looked ok, I think I'd reuse them. Better odds at success than rolling the dice on a new cam imo.
When I put my Cad 500 together about 60K miles ago, I set the rod and mains a .001-.0015 because I had planned to use either 0W40 Mobil 1 or 5W30 QS synthetic. Oil pressure now at 60K miles is 43# at hot cruise, and lowest is 25# at a hot idle, all give or take 2-3lbs. Those 1970 clearance specs were based on yesterday's oils and machining specs. IMO, todays oils can easily support the low clearances. JWIT
I don't believe the amount of carbon deposits in the combustion chamber in gasoline engine is anywhere comparable with the soot produced by the diesel engines. The soot is in the diesel engines comes from incomplete combustion of the long hydrocarbon molecules. It is an always present problem for that type of engine because of the fuel that is used in them. Gasoline molecules are shorter and burn without soot unless the fuel is contaminated with something else, i.e. engine oil. Burning that oil that makes it's way into the cylinders leaves a very small amount of residue in the cylinders, but it it nothing that comes even close to the soot amounts that have to be dealt with by the oils for the diesel engines.
I dont think it has been solved. Many flat tappet cams still go flat and many cam cores are still made overseas.
Lake Speed the oil guy has a theory that a big factor was the use a calcium as a detergent that was competing with the ZDDP, not that there was less ZDDP to matter but the calcium reduced it's effectiveness.
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Extreme energy cams have fast ramps, and quickly accelerate the valve open and closed. Kind'a pointless on a low revving engine but it's a roller so you should be OK. Sometimes these XE cams are noisy becasue the fast ramps collapse the lifters. Every XE cam I ever used was noisy... how is yours?
This is the camshaft in my COOP 455 with the matchingCOMP Cam roller rackers. How do you think this cam will hold up?
15/50 Mobil-1.....go to their website and you can see the ZDDP PPM...
The reason manufacturers went to roller cams around 1985 was due to emissions failures while still under warranty......the cams back then were the same quality as 1970's....does not take much cam wear to fail EPA in California.....before 6000 mile oil changes and 427, 427, go fast engines with 300+ valve springs you only needed 600 PPM or so.....that changed in a hurry...I agree that todays flat cams are all junk....according to my long term master wrench the only cams he knows that are 100% made in USA with USA steel are edelbrock....which leads into my 60 year belief that guys on the street should just buy the 'kit' of matched parts from a single supplier...like back in 1965 with COBRA KITS for small block Fords...dynomatched parts chosen by guys who not only know more than most but have some really NICE and EXPENSIVE test equipment...
