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Author Topic: a couple of tips from experience  (Read 3327 times)

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Offline jonz2pinto

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a couple of tips from experience
« on: October 04, 2014, 02:27:36 PM »
 :D if you change instrument cluster or any part of it be careful.not all are the same.example I had one that the white plastic everything mounted to crumbled into dust.I put one from a different year(looked the same)but the alt and engine lights were reversed.I chased an alt light and could not figure it out.it ended up I was low on oil(enough to starve rod bearings til one started to knock).I recently changed to full synthetic oil and it started to leak when previous I had no problem. it was a 76 2.8 v6.also it may not make sense but if you run one brand of oil and change you may experience some wear issues.case in point-2.0 rebuilt,no ticking from rockers when running Castro oil.oil was changed to quaker state by an oil change place.then the cam and rockers got completely wiped out in less than  1,000 miles.motor was broke in just fine.can and rockers replaced,changed back to Castro and no more problems.diffe rent oil blends affect metallergy in my thinking.chang ing oil brands other times caused similar problems. Also if you have solid rockers that were never adjusted or had been a long time there may be build up on rocker tips.it may take a couple of times adjusting them to get them from ticking.I had to on a 2.8v6.someone gave me that tip.
Pinto-is short for pint-o-fun.

Offline fozzy

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Re: a couple of tips from experience
« Reply #1 on: October 04, 2014, 07:13:17 PM »
One thing to also consider these days is that engine oil has changed over the last bunch of years. The new oils are designed for newer engines with roller cams and don't have the same additives as oils from yesteryear.
Engine oils like Joe Gibbs racing oil or oils fortified with ZDDP are more suited to engines with flat tappet rockers etc.

Offline 65ShelbyClone

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Re: a couple of tips from experience
« Reply #2 on: October 04, 2014, 11:08:05 PM »
It's true that oil formulations have changed, but tons of new engines still have sliding cam followers. Old flat-tappet pushrod engines are especially susceptible to "energy conserving" oils with low ZDDP levels, but those same oils are specified and fine for many OHC engines that don't have roller valvetrain.
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Offline amc49

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Re: a couple of tips from experience
« Reply #3 on: October 20, 2014, 05:37:57 AM »
The newer engines are commonly four valve with springs so weak you can easily push them by hand. No big amount of zinc needed there. Nothing like the big wipe of a 2.3 follower as valve opens......... .....they often chewed up even back in the day.

Offline sedandelivery

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Re: a couple of tips from experience
« Reply #4 on: October 20, 2014, 06:22:58 AM »
Any recommendation s of the best kind of oil to buy for old engines? Besides the Pinto I have to work on a 1974 Chevrolet Dump Truck .

Offline 74 PintoWagon

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Re: a couple of tips from experience
« Reply #5 on: October 20, 2014, 07:43:29 AM »
Been using off the shelf Castrol GTX for a long time, my 73 dually had 150,000 on the motor when I yanked it out to sell the truck, motor still runs like a top..
Art
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Offline 65ShelbyClone

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Re: a couple of tips from experience
« Reply #6 on: October 20, 2014, 12:43:14 PM »
I completely quit patronizing British Petroleum (owner of Castrol oil and Arco gas) in response to their (mis)handling of the gulf oil disaster.

Any recommendation s of the best kind of oil to buy for old engines?

Just about anything of the right viscosity these days. I have a conglomeration of oils in my turbo engine right now because it's what I had for the initial prime and start. No-name 20w-50, Chevron Delo 400, Chevron Supreme 10w-30/10w-40, and I think there's some Shell in there too. Conventional oils have been suitable for most applications for a few decades.

Ford's 2.3 went roller cam in '88-89. Toyota stuck with their slider 8v for seven more years. Nissan went to buckets somewhere in the middle, but none of the Japanese engines are known for wiping-out cams. I don't think Fords actually are either.
'72 Runabout - 2.3T, T5, MegaSquirt-II, 8", 5-lugs, big brakes.
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Offline sedandelivery

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Re: a couple of tips from experience
« Reply #7 on: October 21, 2014, 05:54:53 AM »
Thank you for the replies. I was wondering as all the newer cars use very light weight oils and I know the older engines use higher viscosity oils, and the discussion of lack of zinc in the newer oils had me wondering.

Offline amc49

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Re: a couple of tips from experience
« Reply #8 on: October 21, 2014, 01:20:11 PM »
The newer cars use lighter weight oils for one reason only.......... ...mileage. You save maybe $7 a year in fuel cost, at least what I figured once at around 15K miles a year. In my view the other reason is because the oils wear the engines slightly faster-they are trying to make up for cars lasting too long now. They did their job too well for once, the PCM keeps them running forever now. Take note of how much talk now about 'startup rattle' like it's been there forever but it hasn't, only since the oils got so light. I have actually cured that rattle by going to higher vis oil and forget the $7. You never really heard of anti-drainback valves in filters until the thinner oils showed up, even though several engines used them WAY back. Now everything pretty much does.

The conventional wisdom says thicker oil is harder to pump up when cold. True.........B UTTT..........

Thinner oil can run out of the bearing clearances easier when capillary attraction quits easier, a function of all fluids in relation to viscosity. Funny how they never tell you that part in the ads..........i f the oil is thicker it hasn't backdrained out of the bearings...... ........

The friction modifiers they replaced the zinc with work pretty well on older stuff unless you start running killer valvetrain loads like on oldschool cam rubbing surfaces. You can find more expensive motorcycle specialty oils that still have zinc but you pay a premium for it now. Truck oils like Delo and Rotella have pretty much lost their extra zinc as well now too.

Certain types of motorcycle have one way clutch type starting systems that if you use a modern car oil with no zinc can then begin to slip to not start, the friction modifiers work that well. TOO well. Changing to correct oil then puts the starter back right again.

Myself, I still use 10-30 or 10-40 oils and will go no lighter, or my old stand by straight 30 weight. Got it in like 3 cars right now and can't kill them. I'd go straight 40 here in Texas in the summer if it wasn't so expensive now. Conventional oil, not synthetic, I haven't gone there yet. At around 9000 mile oil change intervals now I make money even with the oil changes. Can't put my fingers on it exactly but some of the mods they've made to oil in the last few years have also transferred to the conventional oils as well in my view, they won't tell you that of course because they want you to justify all that investment by buying synthetic. I'm beginning to think some of that friction-modifier-zinc-replacement technology IS synthetic and they have to put it in everything but don't say. The oils just don't burn black nearly as quickly as they used to and I'm talking still in the realm of recent PCM controlled cars, not the old carbed ones. At the 9000 number I quoted above the oil will still be brown not nearly black and be still about 80% transparent with very little opacity. Why I started stretching the oil changes further and further, an experiment. I had been running 6000 for many years. Pulled pan on one @ 150K, NO sludge in bottom, I'm talking NONE, light film only that rinsed right off. WALMART Supertech straight 30 weight! Crap oil!

Not saying you all should go and do this but there's food for thought in there somewhere..... .......the fed regulations that oil makers dump zinc and increase mileage may have brought on much better product overall, even the cheap crap.

Offline dick1172762

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Re: a couple of tips from experience
« Reply #9 on: October 21, 2014, 01:46:38 PM »
This is more or less what Bob the oil guy says on his web site. He is really pushing the use of thinner oil to take less time for the oil to reach the bearings. He has also stated that oil pressure is really vodo and that all you really need is enough to keep the lifters pumped up. He had a great post about Hudson in the 30's that ran very good with NO oil pump. Just splash to keep the engine lubed. He stated that the oil is there to carry the heat off, not make the crank float with out touch the bearings. Good reading.
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Offline amc49

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Re: a couple of tips from experience
« Reply #10 on: October 26, 2014, 09:27:23 PM »
Splash only CAN keep an engine together but only if the oil can get flung where it needs, engines are a lot more convoluted inside than back then and usually double the number of parts to splash. Let just one bearing not get enough oil and kiss that sucker goodbye and I don't care which engineer says otherwise. You can scratch a bearing enough to ruin it with your fingernail and no effort at all. Tell them to use a modern engine for a splash test instead of an old one that had few parts to lube and I might listen. Self fulfilling story if you ask me.

Do some reading on the difference in oil pressure requirements from roller type bearings as vs. plain type and tell me you don't need that oil wedge, pretty funny. Rollers can run at 10 psi and 10,000 rpm, try running plain bearing at that and see what happens, that's more pressure than splash gives and you'll tear it up in less than five minutes. The old engine used much bigger bearing area, now the smaller bearing is normal loaded harder and not the same AT ALL. Modern plain type bearings MUST have that pressure to survive. The pressure provides the flow amount.

Can't splash anyway, the surest way to kill 10-15% or more mileage. Just unwrapping the crankshaft of oil trapped in it at high rpm is worth 50 hp on V8 dry sump cars and why they do it.

Look at how they all have anti-drainback filters now, either learn from that or not. There's a reason why all OEMs have gone there and it's not that the oil stays in the bearings better, it's that it drains out faster when thinner.  Hot OR cold. Capillary attraction that sticks oil in place around clearances drops off with thinner liquid used. Study how viscosity is measured, it indirectly but solidly relates to that very issue. AND, if cold starts are so evil and bad, then why can you not think of one car you had that was damaged by that using oldschool oil? It just didn't happen. And no start up rattle back then like now either.  I have none at all and never have. Even on 200K mile cars.  After having disassembled like hundreds of motors you also come to the conclusion they still pretty much kept old school oil around the bearings for long periods of time, the oil passages are still full even after years if filter left on and bearings will still have oil in them as well. Much of that dry start stuff is crap myth.

Beware the stuff you read at BITOG, some of those engineers are quacks, I ran into them when Dad's friends from LTV Aeronautical used to come into the shop, some of those guys had degrees nine miles long but were absolute and total nutjobs. I used to wonder how they could get planes in the air with some of that thinking. Some of it was just screwy.