Ultimate Motor Oil Thread or Why we hate CJ4/SM oils

[JohnJL]

Great work Charles!

Was GTX in the test, for comparison' sake?

[cnavarro]

#17, 18 were GTX's

[alniki]

Found the equivalent of Castrol TWS 10W60 here in Taiwan, labled as Super Racing 10W60 and used by the official BMW service.

Also learned that 2007 already saw the new SM-rated golden bottle Super Racing 10W60 and the original SL-rated silver bottle red cap one likely was already discontinued. Possibly another horrible story as Mobil 1. So you may want to check out the supply of TWS if interested.

[cnavarro]

The TWS I have here (for my old VW that is worn out and needs the extra viscosity to have any oil pressure at all) is still SL rated. But like you said, that's a disaster waiting to happen if they did reformulate it!

[brett25]

I apologize if this question was asked in an earlier post, but what is the general consensus on change interval if using the Brad Penn 20/50 in an 80' SC 3.0? Thanks!

[cnavarro]

Based on used oil analysis, I'm figuring 5000-6000 highway miles is a safe drain interval, or six months, at least in my '91 c4 cab. That's with changing the oil out at about half of the starting TBN. Some recommend going further, but I prefer to change the oil when there is still some life left in it. As far as cars being tracked, it's cheap insurance to change the oil after every event.

[brett25]

thanks Charles! Thats sound advice. I'm a daily driver, not tracking.

NorCal Brad Penn Oil distributors

WESTERN BAY AREA

Accessories Plus

Ray Zamagni
1421 Old County Road Unit d
Belmont, California 94002
650-591-2400 PHONE

SACRAMENTO/SANTA ROSA

Karmont Development
Monte Berney
1158 Lawrence Road
Danville, California 94506
1-925-766-4680 PHONE

SANTA CRUZ

Bayside Oil
Kim
210 Encinal St
Santa Cruz, California 95060
1-831-427-3773

[PatrickB]

Charles~

Thanks so much for all the info you have provided for this sensitive subject!

I was wondering if you have heard about or have tested Redline's synthetic Motorcycle lines? Per your suggestion, I had been using Mobil1 V-Twin 20w50 with great success!
I was at my local Napa Store last week, and happened to meet the local Redline supplier. I asked him about the Zn & P dilemma us air cooled guys are facing, and we chatted for about 15 minutes as if he were an LN Engineering employee!
He said that they were in the process of reformulating their automotive line, sharply reducing the Zn & P. He suggested their motorcycle line without me even mentioning Mobil1 V-Twin. He said that their motorcycle line has MUCH higher amounts of Zn & P and that they have NO plans of reducing it for that line. They have several weights, and he asked me the model, year and mileage of my 3.2, and recommended their 20W60 designed for V-Twins. I went for the change, and so far so good! Plus, the local store stocks almost their entire line!

[Jesset100]

Is this to good to be true.
http://www.oilextreme.com/index.html

[rickdm]

Change the oil after every track event? That would be a lot of oil changing! Right now I figure I change it every 10 to 12 hours of track time, which is about three DE weekends or about every 1,000 miles. At $4 / quart it is not the money that is an issue, but 10 to 12 oil changes a year is a lot of work and a ton of old oil to dispose of. Along with the brake bleeding and other maintenance it would start to look more like a day job than a hobby

[RWebb]

Racing IS a day job.

And don't forget the need to discard the braided brake hoses after each race....

If you are just a hobbyist "racer" - i.e. track event, then you can be somewhat more lax.

[cnavarro]

Originally Posted by rickdm

Change the oil after every track event? That would be a lot of oil changing! Right now I figure I change it every 10 to 12 hours of track time, which is about three DE weekends or about every 1,000 miles. At $4 / quart it is not the money that is an issue, but 10 to 12 oil changes a year is a lot of work and a ton of old oil to dispose of. Along with the brake bleeding and other maintenance it would start to look more like a day job than a hobby

Every 1,000 mi (or 10 to 12 hours) is probably fine, for the weekend DE warrior, and probably similar to some of the recommendations I have seen for suggested drain intervals on some racing oils, adjusting for the increased capacity of a 911. Doing some used oil analysis on the oil might help to determine how the oil is doing after a few DE events and you might come to find that you're still changing the oil too ofter :-)

[cnavarro]

Originally Posted by Jesset100

Is this to good to be true.
http://www.oilextreme.com/index.html

I think you answered it for yourself. It's been my experience that regardless of for wear or horsepower gains, using an oil we know performs well for both categories will probably make things worse, or do nothing at all. Most of these additives fall under "snake oil."

We tested one company's race oil additive, claiming more hp and better fuel economy. On the dyno, the additive caused us to loose almost 3% hp and torque (4 ft/lb loss) when added to Brad Penn. BSFC increased about 1%. This is on average across all the pulls, not just one peak number.

I just finished writing up the results from our series of dyno testing of motor oils (done in conjunction with Aircooled Technology). Here's a link to the draft:

http://www.lnengineering.com/motoroiltestingwhitepaper.pdf

Regardless, I will stick to Swepco 306 15w40 and Brad Penn Racing 20w50. Royal Purple Max Cycle also showed itself to be very good and as good, if not better than Mobil 1 V-Twin.

[JFairman]

[QUOTE=RWebb;3760180]Racing IS a day job.

"And don't forget the need to discard the braided brake hoses after each race...."

When I worked part time on Preston Henn's swap shop 962 back in the mid eightees, chassis #962104 the whole car was taken completely apart and reassembled before an endurance race like Sebring or Daytona.
A hose clamp was never reused.
John Shapiro, the crew cheif gave me a box with around 300+ hose clamps that ran at Sebring or Daytona because he wasn't going to use them again.
Most of them are "Zebra" size 50-70. They always used 2 hose clamps next to each other on each end of all the boost hoses in case one failed during a race.

There were also two red motronic boxes mounted on the bulkhead to the left of the driver seat, dual throttle cables, and 4 Bosch fuel pumps running in paralell for the same reason... in case one failed during a race.

The stainless aeroquip lines in the car were dated and replaced after a certain time frame.

[brett25]

thats makes a lot of sense when you put it that way. To have an important race like Daytona fail because of a faulty hose clamp or a weak section of hose if such an event can be avoided (or at least greatly reduced) by building in redundancy like that, is pretty smart. Is that common practice for most teams? Now if only NASA would try that.....

[rickdm]

I don't know if any of you saw the episode last year during the formula 1 races where they did a special on how they keep track of the replacement rate for parts on an F1 car. Basically they have a form of bar code on every part in the car that looks like a series of dots. As the part is put in the part is scanned and the information automatically fed into a computer which keeps track of every part on the car and knows how many hours the part is good for. After every session the computer will inform the team of any parts that need replacing. They said the system came from the airplane industry. It was very impressive.

[moneymanager]

I looked over a couple of these threads trying to find whether anyone has
stated directly that GM's EOS is again available and easy to find. THere are dozens of older posts frantically noticing that it is gone. For the record, it is available now. I bought several bottles on line last week. Jim 11 Feb 2008.

[WERK I]

Originally Posted by moneymanager

I looked over a couple of these threads trying to find whether anyone has
stated directly that GM's EOS is again available and easy to find. THere are dozens of older posts frantically noticing that it is gone. For the record, it is available now. I bought several bottles on line last week. Jim 11 Feb 2008.

That is great news. I just did search on Google for it and found this site that sells it. Around $11 isn't bad, considering CompCams lube was near $19.

http://www.gmpartsdirect.com
Here is the GM part#88862586

[hcoles]

this should make Charles happy.... I ordered Delvac from him and installed it last night...
this morning... cold shifting felt easier than the Redline that was in there, probably perfectly good Redline... I think I'm changing every year, doing everyday street driving and maybe equiv. of 10 track days a year. The one thing I don't like about the Delvac is that it is not a fancy cool color of some sort like blue or red.. just boring clear. Charles.. can they put some color in it so I feel like I'm getting my money's worth? ;-)

[kang]

Have you seen this thread?

http://forums.rennlist.com/rennforums/showthread.php?t=407224

On page 5, someone mentioned “failures on brand new factory race engines with the recommended Mobil 1 fill.” My question is how can you blame this on the oil? If the oil really caused a brand new motor to fail, wouldn’t every other motor with the same oil fail too? There are bunches and bunches of motors running just fine with the factory recommended M1. Isn’t it possible that something else caused this brand new factory race engine to fail?