Real oil problems

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Hi guys
Without all the fear mongering about what might happen if someone uses brand x oil or filter,who has really had an oil related problem ?
I have had cars for almost 50 yrs and can say that I never had any oil problems other than when I was a teen and ran straight 40 wt oil in the winter with it less than 15 degree outside.
My filter blew up but I shut it off before any damage.

Anyone else with real problems?
 
Nope, not here.

I've said it on multiple occasions - BITOG is primarily about splitting hairs. In reality, any modern name brand oil will do in most situations. But if we all just accepted it and moved on with our lives, we'd have nothing to talk about here.
smile.gif
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Nope, not here.

I've said it on multiple occasions - BITOG is primarily about splitting hairs. In reality, any modern name brand oil will do in most situations. But if we all just accepted it and moved on with our lives, we'd have nothing to talk about here.
smile.gif



Couldn't have said it better myself.
 
Originally Posted By: Dallas69
Hi guys
Without all the fear mongering about what might happen if someone uses brand x oil or filter,who has really had an oil related problem ?
I have had cars for almost 50 yrs and can say that I never had any oil problems other than when I was a teen and ran straight 40 wt oil in the winter with it less than 15 degree outside.
My filter blew up but I shut it off before any damage.

Anyone else with real problems?


Back in the mid 1980s, I had a Fram orange can filter collapse internally and drop my oil pressure down to about 15 PSI max. The media cylinder was wadded up and crushed around the center tube so that everything was pretty much blocked, and the bypass valve was jammed so it could just barely crack open. They may be highly reliable now, but I still avoid the low-end Fram filters (love the Ultra, though).

No damage resulted because I shut it down and started tracking down the problem. But that's the only oil or oil-related problem I've ever had.

Oh, I did have a Ford 302 suck up a nylon tooth that had broken off the cam gear and lock the oil pump, turning the oil pump drive shaft to a pretzel. But that was a mechanical problem, not oil or filtration.
 
My Tribute locked up solid on me and would not start on a -29C morning (XMas Day, 2013) with a mixture of 10W-30 oils in the pan, and a bottle of STP put in much earlier.

I HAD to get it going, and it took over 20 minutes of jump starting to get it to catch, and boy did it clatter until it warmed up.

Yes, I'm aware I had a thick oil mix in there, but I didn't think it would get soooo thick the engine would not start. Will never, ever use anything thicker than 5W in the winter from now on!
 
No problems with engines, just "know it alls" that tell me I should run synthetic in my turbo to make it last. It's lasted 30 years of cheap house brand oils and cheap filters.
 
I got my daily driver VW 1.8t cheap because of an oil related failure. The previous owner neglected the oil changes, used greed bottle quaker state with wax and didn't maintain the oil level. Eventually most of the oil evaporated out and left black sludge peaces on everything clogging the pick up screen. The turbo had failed in the process.

I've had five 90's civic engines fail because the oil doesn't drain down from the head fast enough when you push the revs higher than stock on a modded set up: cams, head, exhaust etc., with the stock oil quantity in the crank case and not running a high hths oil. By design, the civic sohc allowed #4 cylinder to heat up first squeezing out the oil film on the connecting rod journal. Failures occurred from several issues, a failure from either too thin an oil for the application, sucking the pan dry with a high volume oil pump, being foolish and running thick oil additives that slowed the oil circulation and watered down the oils additive package, or having a rich tune that diluted the oil with fuel and the resulting film strength failed under extreme load.
I had a friends civic D-series sohc fail because of main bearings worn past the babbit/lead and we took it for 5 pulls right after each other during a tuning session. He had conventional oil too thin for the application that heated up into it's intermittent heat range when it starts to turn into a gas and stop being a liquid. With worn main bearing, he could have had a compromised oil pressure to the journal bearings.

I sustained severe engine damage on an 89 Ford Probe GL back in 1998 from low oil level because it leaked quickly not checking it soon enough and red-lining it often. There was a lot of metal in the filter and it burned oil real bad after that with 175K miles on the engine.
 
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In 1973 I had a 1964 Chevelle with 283 and powerglide. I ran Quaker State oil exclusively and changed oil and filter every 2000 miles. My elders told me to use Quaker State because it was made from Pennsylvania Crude :). After years of doing this, I removed a valve cover to replace a gasket. Everything was clean, but rockers, pushrods, and springs were covered with a waxy, gold colored coating. Scraping a knife blade along the pushrod shaved off a waxy, gold strip of the coating. I thought this crud would eventually narrow the oil passages and went to Castrol and JC Penney motor oil. The engine went over 200 k without a rebuild, so no apparent lasting damage from the Quaker State. I have never used QS since, although it is probably better now. I have never had anyone else mention the QS " waxy gold coating " problem.
 
Originally Posted By: wildmanrandall
I got my daily driver VW 1.8t cheap because of an oil related failure. The previous owner neglected the oil changes, used greed bottle quaker state with wax and didn't maintain the oil level. Eventually most of the oil evaporated out and left black sludge peaces on everything clogging the pick up screen. The turbo had failed in the process.


Quaker State had nothing to do with the failure, and the "wax" [censored] goes way back to when it used Pennsylvania crude. The same thing was said about Pennzoil. Neither have used this base stock in decades and for the past 13 years Quaker State and Pennzoil uses Royal Dutch Shell base stocks, mainly from the Middle East.

The VW 1.8T is a well documented sludge monster, any conventional put under the same neglect as you described would have caused this failure.
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Nope, not here.

I've said it on multiple occasions - BITOG is primarily about splitting hairs. In reality, any modern name brand oil will do in most situations. But if we all just accepted it and moved on with our lives, we'd have nothing to talk about here. : Thanks Quattro. I use another phrase for "splitting hairs." Picking excrement with the chickens (pswtc). And there's a lot of picking goes on here sometimes but it is always interesting and there are many on this forum who have insight into a number of problems related to lubrication and filtration.
 
Stupid me for believing labels I tried to save a buck or three on ATF. Used SuperTech Mercon V in a Honda Civic because label said compatible with Honda Z-1. As soon as it was installed it slipped in second gear from 10-14MPH and constantly. Did a few D&F thereafter and installed Castrol Transmax MVI which fixed the slipping. Have a case of Honda DW-1 now for the next time I change it.
 
The way I understand the difference in ATF, the old "F" type
was listed as; not friction modified.

For better understanding the roll of wet clutch
compatibility of the different ATFs, the F type should
have been called "not friction enhanced" instead.

If correct, the F type is more slippery than
Mercon V or Dextron III and will cause wet clutch slippage.

Caterpillar drive train oils could also be called friction enhanced engine oils,
as most carry API CD.
 
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