Best 2 litre oil 30wt, multi, syn ? Options

[rush]

I have always used 30 weight in air motors. Couple of 912 friends use syn multi...any thoughts

[toolguy]

always used Valvoline Racing 20-50, still has the good additives for
older motors

[steuspeed]

I was running the Brad Penn but switched back to Valvoline VR1 Racing 20-50 High Zinc formula for older engines like toolguy. I can get it easily at the FLAPS and it out performed Brad Penn in some test I read around here somewhere.

[stugray]

Same answer as on your other thread:

If you are made of cash, Brad Penn Racing Oil ("The Green Stuff") or Joe Gibbs racing oil are supposedly the best.
If you do lots of oil changes and dont want to spring for the best, Valvoline VR1 Racing Oil (with High ZDDP) is what I use.

And I use 20w50

[Jake Raby]

Joe Gibbs DRIVEN DT50 is al we use. I am biased because we developed it.

The VR1 is about the best thing over the counter, but it comes with compromises.

['73-914kid]

VR1 is a great oil, but it is a non-detergent racing oil that is meant to be changed after a race weekend (or two depending on the engine), hence there is little need for the oil to contain any detergents.

Something to think about if you expect to maintain a normal oil change time interval while running it.

BTW, we run Brad Penn 40wt in our Cosworth BDA race engine both out of experience and from the recommendation of the engine builder. Not knocking the oil that Jake developed one bit, because it's great stuff, but if Brad Penn is good enough for a 10,000 RPM race motor, it's probably just fine for our type 4's.

[Mr. Olympic Blue 2 You]

I recently went to a local Porsche club tech session given by the Chassis engineer of the Alex Job racing team..he said the Brad Penn oil is now in the same boat as everyone else regarding the gov't regulations of the ZDDP content and it was not recommended any longer. He was recommending a lubro moly 10w-60 product and is available thru some NAPA stores. When asked about leakage in air cooled cars he said there wasn't any unlike most synthetic oils.

Our local well known air cooled machinist likes the Valvoline racing mentioned here.

Andrew

['73-914kid]

I recently went to a local Porsche club tech session given by the Chassis engineer of the Alex Job racing team..he said the Brad Penn oil is now in the same boat as everyone else regarding the gov't regulations of the ZDDP content and it was not recommended any longer. He was recommending a lubro moly 10w-60 product and is available thru some NAPA stores. When asked about leakage in air cooled cars he said there wasn't any unlike most synthetic oils.

Our local well known air cooled machinist likes the Valvoline racing mentioned here.

Andrew

That's interesting to hear. I talked with one of the engineers at Brad Penn 2 weeks ago, and he said they hadn't changed anything...

[somd914]

VR1 is a great oil, but it is a non-detergent racing oil that is meant to be changed after a race weekend (or two depending on the engine), hence there is little need for the oil to contain any detergents.

Something to think about if you expect to maintain a normal oil change time interval while running it.

BTW, we run Brad Penn 40wt in our Cosworth BDA race engine both out of experience and from the recommendation of the engine builder. Not knocking the oil that Jake developed one bit, because it's great stuff, but if Brad Penn is good enough for a 10,000 RPM race motor, it's probably just fine for our type 4's.

Detergent, that's something I haven't seen advertised in a while so I got curious. Between our kids' three cars, our DDs, and the toys we have a collection of 7 oils in the garage at the moment, five conventional and two synthetic. They are all rated API-SN (except VR1) but none of them mention detergent, however, API-SN covers detergent qualities I believe.

So I went looking at Valvoline's VR1 product info, see link below. They claim an API-SN performance level (though not certified) and recommend VR1 for street and track use.

https://valvoline.com/pdf/vr1_racing.pdf

I'm no expert in oils, but the in my opinion much of the industry is selling, and forgive the pun, snake oil. It is all so confusing, and from my research I've found many contradictory claims from labs or even contradictory product information from the manufacturers. And where is the empirical data? Outside of Consumer Reports many years ago, who has run a fleet of cars for close to 100k miles and tore all the engines do to examine wear differences?

[screenguy914]

VR1 is a great oil, but it is a non-detergent racing oil that is meant to be changed after a race weekend (or two depending on the engine), hence there is little need for the oil to contain any detergents.

Something to think about if you expect to maintain a normal oil change time interval while running it.

BTW, we run Brad Penn 40wt in our Cosworth BDA race engine both out of experience and from the recommendation of the engine builder. Not knocking the oil that Jake developed one bit, because it's great stuff, but if Brad Penn is good enough for a 10,000 RPM race motor, it's probably just fine for our type 4's.

Valvoline makes two types of VR-1. The type you're referring to is a HD non-synthetic blend and recommended for street vehicles.


The other VR-1 is a full synthetic oil. It has about the same percentage of zinc and phosphorous, but supposedly for off-road use. They recommended change intervals at 500 mi. (Reason - lack of detergents).


Valvoline's advertising leaves much to be desired as to the difference between the two.

One of several internet discussions on VR1:
http://www.chevelles.com/forums/showthread.php?t=398916

Here's the mother of all discussion on lube oils:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911...j4-sm-oils.html

Hope this helps,
Sherwood

[bandjoey]

"I'm no expert in oils, but the in my opinion much of the industry is selling, and forgive the pun, snake oil. It is all so confusing, and from my research I've found many contradictory claims from labs or even contradictory product information from the manufacturers. And where is the empirical data? Outside of Consumer Reports many years ago, who has run a fleet of cars for close to 100k miles and tore all the engines do to examine wear differences?"

Jake Raby. Has run the fleet, torn down the motors and specked it out. Not here to promote his oil but a follower of someone with this knowledge. A search will bring up his research.

Back on VR1. Clay told us at Talimena he using VR1 straight 50. I've always used 20-50 vr1 for several years myself.

[somd914]

screenguy and bandjoey - thanks for the info.

I went looking for on Jake's research. After many articles stating engine tear downs as part of their research, I couldn't find any articles discussing details of test procedures or measured wear differences between oils. That's not to say they don't exist, just saying it's not right out there in the open. I did find this chart on numerous web pages:

http://lnengineering.com/resources/2014/02...bs-racing-oils/

From my experiences better numbers don't always mean observable or real differences.

Here's an interesting read:

http://www.xs11.com/xs11-info/xs11-info/ar...-july-1996.html

Anyway, I'm not out to bash any product, just skeptical of a lot of oil claims when machining, metal quality, build quality, etc likely affect engine lifespan more than any of these high quality oils being discussed.

[nine9three]

I run Mobil 1 V Twin 20w/50 in both my 993 and my 914.

[Jake Raby]

I pulled all my research and wrote the internet payback machine to have the archives pulled as well. I did the research for my own engine program, and quite frankly I was dumb enough to post it online for a while.

Charles at LN and I discovered Brad penn and brought it to the air-cooled world at the beginning of the millennium. I swore by it for many years, but then it changed, and now the company was sold and it has changed again. Don't get too comfortable in your choices, because they are constantly changing, whether you know it or not.

I first noticed that Brad penn changed when it lost a certain smell out the tailpipe of a few of my cars. I approached the VP of marketing and he admitted to it. That pissed me off, because we were assisting them and they didn't even bother to tell us.

Oil threads are funny, guys that don't even know how to properly read a used oil analysis are swearing that what they use is the best when they don't even know what a TAN or TBN value is. Thats why I gave up posting anything and stay fairly quiet on the whole thing.

All I know is that since 2001 I have lost ONE engine due to a cam and lifter failure, and that was my own. I run the oils we have developed with Gibbs in everything from my lawnmower to my Deutz tractor, to my AM General 5 ton military truck to my 512 TR Testarossa and the 308, not to mention every VW and Porsche I own. Thats a fleet of 30 vehicles and each of them is a rolling test bed for some flavor of engine oil. I have reams of UOA evaluations that are 3" thick and we pull samples from every car that we drain oil from, customer or otherwise, on top of every engine that we build.

If we drain oil out of anything, we collect a sample. I am VERY biased because my benefit from working my ass off to collect data is that we have the ability to know exactly what changes in a formulation, and sometimes thats just the type of moly or polymer thats used. I develop oil to make our engines have a chance at life, because in 200-2001 I lost 30 engines due to using the 'old standby" oil that we'd used for years. Luckily all of them but 3 failed on the dyno and lucky we figured out why and attacked the issue before anyone else in the industry had figured it out.

All that said, there's only one study remaining and its not even valid today because the oil that was used has also changed, and has done so several times since the study was conducted. Its a 160,000 mile bit or empirical data that will give you a sample of what we've learned. This is of course, from a T4 engine.

http://www.aircooledtechnology.com/index.p...ileage-teardown

Before you say that I am just trying to sell oil, understand that I won't sell you oil if you beg me to. In fact I have no way to sell anything except a turn key engine since I sold my store in 2013. We are developers. I don't give a shit what sells.

[stugray]

This is interesting paper on ZDDP:

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1502/1502.07261.pdf

It has this table:

(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/uploads_offsite/i366.photobucket.com-10819-1432178462.1.png)

That was what convinced me to use VR1.
Not quite as much ZDDP as the Brad Penn, but more than most of the others.

[Jake Raby]

The table above is no longer accurate.

Guess who makes the Comp cams break in lube?

ZDDP was invented by Lubrizol in 1940. Lubrizol is the company that blends 100% of the Joe Gibbs Driven oils. They also are the sole provider for lubricants to the US Military.

This post has been edited by Jake Raby: May 20 2015, 09:29 PM

[nine9three]

One more good oil discussion: http://rennlist.com/forums/993-forum/79928...15w50-oils.html

[brant]

Jake?

How is the RP 20/50 racing oil holding up in the last two years. (You used to think it was still a decent product)

Still what my local race motor Allen Johnson is recommending. He has a bunch of air cooled Race motors doing well. And he does his own machine work and is detailed.

[Jake Raby]

I used to love Royal Purple... No longer, once it became readily available it tanked.

[stugray]

The table above is no longer accurate.

Paper at Cornell Univ says Submitted on 23 Feb 2015.
They used Nuclear Magnetic Resonance & Neutron Activation Analysis (IMG:style_emoticons/default/aktion035.gif)
(Cant get much nerdier than that).
They even confirm what Jake says about recent changes in recipes

"There have been concerns among some automotive enthusiasts that the lowered ZDDP concentrations
may have detrimental effects on engines. Specifically, there has been much
discussion concerning the effects on engines with "flat-tappet" cam shafts and high-pressure
valve springs in classic cars "


Truth is that I would use the Joe Gibbs if I didnt plan on changing the oil about every other month (every couple of race weekends).
At 8 qts that would be expensive...

My breakin-oil was Jakes, and the test & tune & first few track days was snake oil.
Then I used up a case of Brad Penn, and now to the VR1.

I probably havent even put 500 miles on it yet, so oil analysis would be questionable with that many changes.

I would love to hear what Jake thinks about the VR1 synthetic versus the Dino version...(pictures above).