| I sent the post to my father who recently retired from a complany that makes their own industrial drilling rig oil for many different applications. Here was his response: Lots going on here. I have several thoughts. He needs more oil flow (volume) not necessarily pressure or thicker oil. Can you drill-out the oil passages feeding the crank? Small block 4 bolt main Chevy(Z-28) was designed-with trans AM racing in mind-with large oil passages to solve this problem back in the 70's. Lab tests on the oil? He needs to test the Viscosity Index of the mobil he's using. ZDDP would help the 5W-30 hold film strength and allow more volume of 5W-30 to flow through the bearings than 5W-50. Mobil 1 bought at Walmart is not a true Synthetic-just a high quality Dyno lube. AMZOIL, Redline or the Syn we get from XXXXXX is better at holding film strength. The 5W-50 you got from XXXX is meant for off-raod--drag boats & such & is genuine synthetic and has a big load of zinc. Again-oil tests? Race engines have harder bearing material & looser bearing settings (to allow more oil flow) Larger capacity oil pump--dry sump. High oil flow and high quality oil will solve many problems. I'll see if I can get the guy that used to work designing oils for XXXX to join in. May take a day or two. He works for Conoco-Phillips at their Research lab in Bartlesville. He is not always user friendly and helpful. And then this one after I said Ash was using 15W-50 M1: The important number to judge quality of oil on the spec sheet is the VI-- "Viscosity Index". This tells how well the base oil that a lube oil is made of hold its film strength under heat/pressure (working hard). Higher number shows it's better at maintaining its Viscosity and simply a higher quality oil. The VI on the mobil 15w-50 is 160. On the XXXX oil for the same weight it's 186. I'd bet similar differences for the 5w-30 Mobil /XXXX oil. Slick marketing most always wins.
1996 TT #61 of 300 |
