72Fury
Senior Member
You need the zinc additives in oil like Brad Penn for example. Synthetic is great for newer engines & I run it in everything I have that is newer, like your 96 truck.
Motor oil
- Thread starter hionlyf
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You need the zinc additives in oil like Brad Penn for example. Synthetic is great for newer engines & I run it in everything I have that is newer, like your 96 truck.
Well I didn't think that oil had a shelf life either, I thought hell it has been in the ground all this time and couldn't have that many additives in that would go bad. I have some Quaker State oil 30 wt that my dad had bought back in the late' 80's. I changed the oil in the lawn mower and used the QS , as I was pouring it into the engine a large goopy mass came out of the freshly opened qt. I checked the remaining QS and all had the same thing. I have to wonder about the 3 cases of castrol gtx 20w50 that is in the garage , if it is any good
moper
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Oil doesn't have an expiration date - but it can go out of spec. The ANSI/SAE startburst will tell you which oil is older. For gas engines the closer to "SA" the letters the older the spec. Anything before SM has sufficient zink for mild cams at least. If you have anything aggressive the standard needs to be SJ or older or you need the oils specially made for older cars (Brad Penn, Gibbs, VR-1 NFSU, etc.). If you look at the back of shelves you might get lucky and find the SJ or SL oils. Deisel oils are similar but I don't know the letter off the top of my head. The newer stuff isn;t as good as the older stuff...
Here's something I found from Mobil on shelf life. http://www.mobilindustrial.com/ind/...g-oils-greases-shelf-life-recommendations.pdf
They are saying 5 year shelf life is typical.
They are saying 5 year shelf life is typical.
I ended up deciding to try the Royal Purple line of Oil's, naturally I'm also going to use a ZDDP additive, I will report my findings in time.
I've always used Quaker State or Mobil 1, I run SAE 10W30 in my '93 Cheyenne with an additive, and I will be running 10W40 Synthetic with a Zinc Additive.
Nick
I've always used Quaker State or Mobil 1, I run SAE 10W30 in my '93 Cheyenne with an additive, and I will be running 10W40 Synthetic with a Zinc Additive.
Nick
commando1
Old Man with a Hat
After watching a 150 youtube videos on oils, I am still convinced that the very low mileage used synthetic diesel oil (2014 EPA Sulfer-free) from my neighbors RV is still the best in my cars. Plus he added Lucas, Tiger Piss, whatever into it.
70bigblockdodge
Old Man with a Hat
You can't just add zinc its a chemical process plus new detergents consume the zinc like a contaminate the older oils detergent was formulated for zddp. Also this is personal opinion but I would not run 10 anything in a engine with more than stock 340 springs in a small block and magnum springs in a big block, that's just my hang up but I have not lost a cam yet, a friend of mine lost two cams in a row with 10-30 and additives.
commando1
Old Man with a Hat
Ask anybody sitting around in the lawn chairs bullchitting when they say they wiped a lobe what weight they were using.
They always say 10-30 {fill in the fanciest name you can think of}
70bigblockdodge
Old Man with a Hat
He still thinks its the springs. 10-30 is winter oil in anything with over 75,000 mi and lived it whole life north of the mason Dixon line. If you don't drive your classic car from nov-march and you live where it snows that crap should not be in your car.
tbm3fan
Old Man with a Hat
A new test of High mileage oils. Shown here is QS Defy with zinc still up there compared to others.
http://www.pqiamerica.com/June 2014/QSDEFY.htm
http://www.pqiamerica.com/June 2014/QSDEFY.htm
I have never heard good things about Quaker State oils. And if the DEFY oil brand meets the SL specification, it still doesn't have a significant amount of zinc in it - you can't and still meet that requirement (designed to ensure catalytic converters will not prematurely age). So maybe it has more zinc than the worst oil on the market in that respect, but it still is a far cry from oils of 20 years ago. Has anyone ever wiped out an aged camshaft using an oil that was at least 20W something? People everywhere are wringing their hands over this issue, but where are the ruined cams to justify the concern. Yes, new rebuilt engines with soft Chinese camshafts may have ruined camshafts, but that might not be an oil issue at all. After all, most rebuilt engine first starts are done with special moly lubes that come with the camshafts for break in purposes. And yet they still fail, which suggests the cams themselves are not up to spec.
I have a buddy that works at Lubriplate in Toledo, they have been around for over a 100 yrs at that location. They make some of the best oils and lubricants, they did a test on oils 20 yrs ago, I seen the research papers on oil quality- lubricity and Quaker state was dead last. He recommended not to use it at all, unless it was a lawnmower
tbm3fan
Old Man with a Hat
Key word "20 years ago". Long ago Pennzoil was considered to be a bad oil that sludge your engine. I remember many bad things about it in the mid 70's maybe right maybe wrong but no science involved. Today it is top rated by many. The evaluation by PQIA is not to be dismissed because of thoughts from 20 years ago. Oils change, bases change, requirements change...
I find myself unable to change my opinion about Quaker State when I see words on the front of the bottle suggesting enhanced zinc levels when at the same time the SL designation limits the zinc level to that which is claimed by a number of sources to be inadequate for older engines. Misleading come-ons make me go to someone else - kind of like politics. Why would you trust a company like that?
1966newport
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SL is a 15 yo spec.
1966newport
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so much bad info in this topic
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A few companies are offering oils that are good for our cars without requiring additives, I use Brad Penn, why would you use anything else?
I also use Mopar filters, They have them at AAP. Part number M0-090. The 090 is the last 3 numbers of the Mopar OEM part number.
The SL spec was adopted in 2001 as far as I can tell, but still pretty old spec. But some sources say anything after SG is not adequate, but as you said, who knows what to believe? So DEFY is better than the SN designation at least, thus it may be safer than the most current oils meeting the SN designation. Here is an article from allpar on the subject for what it is worth:
http://www.allpar.com/old/oils.php
Maybe Matt is right, just go with Brad Penn and stop worrying about this whole mess. And it looks like the Amazon price is $79 for 12 quarts of the semi synthetic 20W50 including shipping to your door. That isn't much different than the price of semi synthetics on the shelves of Autozone, Pep Boys, etc. Why buy anthing else for our purposes?
http://www.penngrade1.com/
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tbm3fan
Old Man with a Hat
A 15 year old spec is bad for a 45 year old car? Maybe for a 2 year old car.
As you said lots of bad info floating out there from both sides. Those that sell zinc have their vested interest and will not change their story. The there are others who have used 1000ppm zinc oils in older stock engine with no problems. One needs to consider what type of zinc is being used and what the critical balance is between zinc and detergents. Prior to 1993 zinc was technically not limited. By 1996 the specs said 1000ppm in 10W-30 API oils yet no cam failures. In 2004 API SM 10W-30 was now at 800ppm.
SG 1000-1400 - SH 1000-1400 - SL/SJ 1000-1400 - SM 30W and up 1000-1200ppm - SM 20W and down 800ppm - SN 800ppm.
You can use SN oil to break in an engine with a flat tappet cam under .400 lift and 215 lbs. spring pressure and that comes from Joe Gibbs. Once you go above that then things change. The other issue overlooked by some is the detergent pack. Today oils are designed to have longer OCI's which means better detergent packs. Yet those detergents also can clean off zinc while keeping the engine clean for longer. Hence the critical balance between zinc and detergents. Maybe, just maybe, the reason there were cam failures outside of builder mistakes and poor quality cams also had something to do with the balance between zinc and detergents. Both were changed at the same time but most all focus on zinc. Detergents and dispersants don't care if it is sludge, varnish or zinc they are cleaning off metal surfaces. If I could clean a store out of SL oil I would as I don't care about older detergent packs since I change oil once a year and with only 2000 miles on it at most. I think most of us do that with our older less used engines. An SL oil was typically spec'd for changing at around 5000 miles by most manufacturers.
Currently my stock engine Mustang, Polara and Park Lane use SM 10W-30 oils and get changed once a year with 1000-15000 miles on it. My Cougar gets VR-1 Racing oil with lower detergents which gets changed every year at 1000 miles. The truck, with it's newly rebuilt 390 and higher than stock lift cam will be broken in with Brad Penn. What is special about break in oil. We know it has higher zinc levels but it also has much lower detergent and dispersant levels. After that it will use the same as the Cougar. When the 410 and 360 are rebuilt they too will go to VR-1 as their standard running oil.
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