>>>SHELSLEY MEDIUM contains a "Tacky Additive" >>>25W-70 ??? Man how's the flow rate on that ?>>> Prolly a gear & bar chain lube tackified with wheel-bearing grease. Then re-labelled as motor oil.
To me if your cam and lifters were ground correctly so they spin, you have the correct valve spring pressure which relatively low over the nose and the seat, and it’s a solid lifter cam which has no load every revolution there should be no worry with cam wear after proper break in. I see Valvoline is stating it’s 10-30 high zinc is still listed as a racing oil which they have previously stated not for street use.
Straight 70w is available. Fairly common use in air cooled iron motorcycle engines. I have some I got at a swap meet. I put it in my old Indian Scout, but I mixed in some 50w. Thinned it down a bit y'know..
I only used the term snake oil in jest. While there are tons of bull crap additives for oil , coolant etc that are just crap. Some work great. Lukas , the GM coolant tablets , bars’ stop leak to name a few that have worked for me in the past. bit let’s face it a bottle of goo, a tablet in the cooling system etc will help, might get you by , or it may fix a minor issue. But it’s not a blanket “ ITLL FIX ANYTHING “ solution. like I said I’ve had this stuff work and I’ve had it not work. I had a skid steer at a customers with a blown head gasket and baffed turbo I kept alive for 3 years with Lukas and radiator stop leak. One of the hydrostatic drive units finally went snd it was parked. So yes , these “ snake oils “ can and do work in certain situations. And GMS use of coolant tablets is because they designed sub par gaskets snd the stop leak was the cheapest solution. when I worked at Jaguar the inline 6 engines the coolant would eat the aluminum head around the coolant passages and gall the gasket surface. Jaguars solution? Fill the divots with JB weld and file smooth and reinstall.!!!! I think machining a bit off the head would of been the correct fix , but a big old file is under a $100 bucks and how many cylinder heads can I fix with one pack of $9.99 jb weld can I repair ? just cause the big guys say it’s ok , does not make it ok, they just want the cars out of warranty and not there problem to fix anymore.
All I know is that the trans stuff works from Lucas. Is it a fix all, no. But that darn forklift moved under it's own power once again and is still going. Cheap budget by management to work by, cheap solution I say.
Sure. Since paraffin wax is obtained from petroleum by dewaxxing light lubricating oil stocks, I'm not sure why you're asking?
We ran their breakin lube when we broke @Tim 's cam in a few years back. Once your cam is broken in it really is not necessary as long as you don't cheap out on your oil. A bone stock five-six is not going to have much seat pressure and the cam is already burnished at this point. There is some validity to the ZDDP necessity but most of it is hype to sell you additives. I personally would be more concerned with hammering your valve seats in that old mill than trashing the cam. Top oil in your fuel is maybe a better investment.
Maybe he is thinking about High Paraffin motor oil. Quaker state for example used to have a high paraffin content for example. At least that is what we were told.
Read my post, I said BIKE. White Lightning is the brand. But that is irrelevant. The point is, even a highly educated petroleum engineer can be wrong.
I hear ya. I dug up a few old threads on that subject with the same ya-na opinion results. It's an interesting subject next time things get a little boring around here.
>>> Care to clarify what wax based lube is?>>> It's when candles or canning wax are thrown in lubes. Everybody who is anybody knows that.
The 394 that was in my Olds had literally 1 psi of oil pressure at warm idle. I drained that SAE30 out, and filled it with 3 quarts of VR1 SAE50 and 2 quarts of Lucas. The oil was like molasses and it wouldn't really flow very well. The lifters would eventually collapse at highway speed and clack like a diesel. But it got 7 psi of oil pressure at warm idle and stayed running for another couple thousand miles of driving before I pulled it out.
once in a great while I put a little tiny amount of Lucas oil stabilizer into my 41 Cadillac. i’m thinking it might be appropriate to do the same with my high mileage piece of shit 0T bad ass Prius. (after all it is approaching 200,000 miles.)
Fair point. I was testing dependent variable #3; whether a whooped-ass 394 with no oil pressure could get me across an international border and back without having to call my wife to come with a trailer. It passed that test, but I wasn't going to push my luck for another year.
I have been using Lucas oil stabilizer in a 235 that has a loose bottom end for a few years and a rod has not escaped through the block yet,its getting a little more noisier every year and I still drive it like there is no issues with it.
I probably should just be quiet, I'll probably piss somebody off, but some people like reading the technical stuff, so I'll go on and let the chips fall where they will. OK, so the wax based lubes comment got me going here, and I'd like to peel back the onion a little bit here, because I've seen and heard these comments for many years, even long before I got into the lubes business. And I had no idea if they were correct or not. Now I do. Just to clarify, there are no "wax based lubricants" used as engine oils. People have used paraffin wax to lubricate drawers and cabinet doors for decades at least, but no engine oils. There is confusion about this because paraffin crude oil, and paraffin base oils are used to make lubricants. Crude oil is generally classified as aromatic, or napthenic, or paraffinic. Those terms refer to the type of hydrocarbons that make up the oil. No crude is made of only 1 of those types of hydrocarbon compounds, all crudes are made up of all 3, along with all kinds of other compounds, like sulfur for instance. But different crudes, depending on where they come from, tend to be predominantly 1 or another. For instance crude out of California tends to be highly aromatic, not suitable for lubricants. Crude out of Pennsylvania tends to be paraffinic, excellent for base oil for lubricants. Modern hydrocracking technology makes this less important, but back in the day this was really important. So Pennsylvania crude was/is great for refining base oil for lubricants. Aromatic and napthenic hydrocarbons are highly reactive, they will readily react with oxygen under heat and pressure and become oxidized. They are volatile, and the light ends will evaporate under the heat of an engine. And they have a low viscosity index (the viscosity varies greatly relative to temperature). So they aren't suitable for making engine oils. Engine oils have always been made using paraffinic base oils, not just certain brands that are based out of Pennsylvania. That is a misnomer and has lead to a lot of misunderstandings for decades. I'll just go ahead and name the brand everyone's thinking about, Pennzoil (or Quaker State) is NOT wax based and doesn't have wax in it. Paraffin crude oil does contain wax, that is true. But in the refining process, in the old days anyway, the crude was diluted with a solvent, then chilled, and then forced through a membrane filter to remove the wax. That's where the paraffin wax comes from that you buy at the store. (Modern technology transforms the wax particles into high quality paraffin hydrocarbons through a process known as "isomerization"). As long as I can remember Pennzoil has had a bad reputation for building up a bunch of sludge and crap in an engine. I assume that's what everyone is alluding to. That's not wax in the oil that causes that, that's just poor quality engine oil, or engine oil left way too long in an engine. Or an engine with no pcv. It's not wax, it's byproducts of oxidation and or nitration, or overheated cracked oil; polymerized long chain compounds that are insoluble in the oil. They fall out of suspension and accumulate in the engine. Not wax. Now, I don't know the particulars of the conversation with a petroleum engineer or how that relates to all of this. But I think maybe somebody was mistaken about what was being discussed and took the wrong impression out of it.
Back in the 60s and 70s here,,,,,Quaker State was the big oil to use . The commercials on TV stated something about paraffin based,,,if I remember correctly . Now,,,I’m not sure,,,,and I’m certainly not an expert. But I have seen several engines torn down back then loaded with a substance that looked like wax . I remember one engine,,,,a 350,,,,removed the valve covers,,,,,it was an exact mold of the valve cover inside . Looked and felt like a black oiley wax,,,on everything . The only room was where the rockers and pushrods has been moving . I’m not making this up ! Oh yeah,,,,these were engines that were not serviced and maintained on an even schedule . It got to where the joke here was to never use Quaker State . Pennzoil was not a big brand here at the time,,,,,that came into being here ,,,,,about 1985 or there about . Tommy
Thank you Blues4U, I always enjoy reading your posts and you always teach me something. Thanks for taking the time to post “The Technical Stuff”, it means a lot to us professionals.
@Blues4U Awesome post!! I had hears some of those claims for years and assumed they were true. Thanks for the clarification!
Back in 67 i took the auto shop class in Upland California. Somebody brought in a Corvair convertible that needed a fan bearing replaced. we remove the top portion which has the fan bearing pressed onto it. it was squeaky clean in the crankcase area. absolutely no sludge. The owner faithfully used a multi grade shell oil. I think it was the premium Shell oil at the time. x100? perhaps…
as to the lucas oil stabilizer… I had previous experience with a very worn out 62 Cadillac 390. with straight 30w oil the engine had that deep death rattle of bad mains and probably some rods too. with the lucas oil stabilizer (maybe 40% or even 50%) the frikin engine was pretty quiet. i drove that 62 many times hard between Kingman and Phoenix up and down us 93… quite a number of times absolutely no concern… the only reason I retired the car was because of the center u joint going bad. (sold it for a nice profit btw. ) of course in retrospect i wish i replaced the center u joint. and continued to enjoy driving that cad. an EXCELENTE road car. literally NO better road car than a 60s-64 cad.
I'd be kidding you if I said I hadn't heard the stories about deposits/wax/sludge that came from long term use of Pennsylvania-based oils like Quaker State and Pennzoil. Anecdotally, one of my O/T late models that I have owned since it had 49K on the odometer has been virtually exclusively serviced by me with Quaker State and Pennzoil conventional oil, mainly because it's the cheapest name brand oil at Walmart. Oil changes have been religious for me; every 4000 miles (since my driving is overwhelmingly highway) and a fresh Motorcraft filter. At around 215K, I had to replace a failed valve cover gasket, which afforded me the opportunity to look inside the engine for the first time. You could practically eat off of the valvetrain, and it was immaculately clean and free of any deposits or sludge. So in my observations and experience, it's not the brand of the oil, it's a combination of proper PCV, hotter running engines, in concert with much higher quality oils than were available then, and consistent oil changes.
by the way my experience with Lucas oil stabilizer was easily into the 2000s I was forced to relocate to kingman in late 2002 When CF went bankrupt. I got on with a still successful competitor named ABF. For over a half a year i was commuting between Kingman and my house in surprise az outside of Phoenix. that 62 Cadillac was my main ride. I drove many miles with a smile on my face pushing that big boat up and down US 93. too unfrikin real. I can’t find any pictures of my Cadillacs from the early 60s. I saw this one and I’m posting now… is similar to what I drove and enjoyed on the highway.
I've got two cars in the family fleet that leak at the rear main seals. I added the super thick Lucas additive to them but didn't notice any improvement. Does that cancel out someone's positive result?
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