I have read a similar article relating to American musclecars. One specific
point it made was to avoid oils with the API "sunburst" logo -- these are
optimized for fuel economy and have too few anti-wear additives. It included
a fairly technical description of additive packages and their function and
contents.
Although this article didn't cover them, I know a lot of musclecar owners
that have switched to diesel-rated oils.
I have also noticed that there are now a lot of "specialty" oils on the
shelf: "high mileage", "heavy duty", "synthetic blends", etc. It would be
interesting to see some kind of testing or analysis as to whether this is
all marketing fluff.
--
====================
Max
1967 Fastback
Johnny Lightning Muscle Cars USA #14
273 Commando
Factory disc brakes
Mountain View, CA
on 11/20/06 8:53 AM, Aaron Whiteman at awhitema@panix.com wrote:
> In the November-December MOWOG murmers (the publication of the Puget-
> sound based MGCC), there is a rather interesting article entitled
> "oil is killing our engines".
>
> It is written by the head of a shop in Brush Prairie, Washington
> (Foreign Parts Positively), after a seeing camshaft failure and
> calling the manufacturer to investigate.
>
> Apparently the modern API oils lack the levels of Zinc, Manganese and/
> or phosphates to provide appropriate lubrication. The article goes
> into more detail (alas, I cannot find a copy online--it seems rather
> good), but the gist is "use Diesel rated oil for flat tappet engines".
>
> I don't have any background in lubrication or oils--just that I
> religiously use GTX and always have. This article has me considering
> a switch to Delo. Has anybody else seen or heard other articles
> backing up the claim that modern oils are not-so-good?
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