Oil Killing Our Cars

[swift6]

I've seen first hand the destruction of otherwise good parts from this new oil. I have friends who have recently wiped out cams and lifters and blamed it on the parts manufacturers when, in fact, the oil was responsible.

While I'm not giving the new formulations of oil a pass, I have seen a few examples of the opposite. And honestly, I did NOT wake up this morning and decide to be contrary to Yankee. Honest! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/angel.gif

One such example is with my own TR6 engine (built in 2001). The tappets started to disintegrate in less than 1,000 miles. The wear was not uniform, which to me indicated non-uniform hardness of the tappets. If the tappets were fine and the oil was the culprit, I would expect to see more uniform failure. Especially in a new engine.

Luckily, they had not started to impact the cam yet. I replaced the tappets with 'hardened' examples and totally flushed the engine oil passages. Checked them at 1,000 miles, 2,000 miles and 5,000 miles and everything still looks new. Those 5,000 miles were done with standard Castrol 20W50. The reason I even looked at mine to begin with was because another local club member who rebuilt his TR6 engine at the same time (stock specs) had his tappets fail and take out the cam. He installed a new cam and 'hardened' tappets and has run it since with Castrol 20W50 and reports no issues or strange wear.

There was also a rash of tappet failures reported through the 6Pack mailing list in the first part of this century. About the same time Hot Rodders started experiencing the same. Though there really hasn't been as many reports after suppliers backed off the cheapest Asian tappets and we weren't yet 'aware' of newer oils being part of the problem. I also think that most of the suppliers have ridded themselves of the poor tappets.

All that being said though and since they KEEP reducing the amount of ZDDP. I am switching my TR6 to a Racing Formulation this spring. Its easy for me to find locally, is not looking at reduction of ZDDP while the diesel oils are decreasing their ZDDP and there are no catalytics to worry about on that car. Problem solved for now as I see it, at least for me.

Here is a photo showing some of the offending tappets. These are all the intake tappets. You'll see the real obvious stuff but you might see the less subtle wear patterns. My hardened tappets show less wear than these at 5,000 miles than these do with less than 1,000 miles. Even with standard Castrol 20W50.