Just got a 56 Hemi that has not been run in about 15 months, the oil looks good, but am sure I need to change it. But now the problem, in the stuff that came with the engine, there is some non-detergent oil. And since the previous owner is now wearing pine pajamas, I cant ask what oil has been used in the past. So, what type of oil should I use now? Thanx for any input.
The only reason not to run HD is if the engine is sludged up inside. Pull a valve cover off or pull the distributor out, to see how dirty it is.
HD oils can dislodge a bunch of **** that you really dont want flowing around. Your best be is to pull the pan and clean it and the oil pickup out and pull the valve covers and make sure the push rods aren't clogged up and you should be good to go.
Or buy additive. Either way you end up paying the same. If I bought an old hemi that hadn't been run in 15 months I would open it up and see what I had. There may be a reason that it hasn't been run in 15 months. If it is sludged up but looks OK otherwise buy a can of engine flush, and follow the instructions. Look at this pic, this engine was ****oned up tight. The inset is a mouse nest. The common phrase that we hear on the HAMB is that I just got my old engine that ran when parked running and it ran fine for about 15 miles and now it doesn't have any oil pressure. Well duh of course it doesn't. Never ever run an old engine without pulling the pan and at least one main cap. The song goes "my little duece coupe, you don't know what I got." Maybe I don't but you can bet as sure as the sun rises in the east the fella with the coupe does. Always know what ys got even if I don't.
very good advice so far... when I bought my 38 Nash, I pulled the pan, & found the oil pump screen about 3/4 plugged... as to the oil question... in general... all oils have detergent additives, unless they are specifically marked "non-detergent"... the "detergent" is supposed to hold any particals in suspension, so they can be filtered out by the oil filter... my old 38 has no oil filter, so you run non detergent oil, so the solids will drop out in the pan, & not be carried around in the oil to be deposited in the bearings... that said, there are / were lots of "types" & "levels" of detergents... I remember seeing a 100% Penzoil small block Ford out of a middle 60's car, in the mid 70's, that had the valve covers litterally solid with laquered up foam from 10 years of daily driving with Penzoil from the late 60's & early 70's... I'd hope they are using a different formula today ??? BTW... PORKN... nice pic... I've seen one similar, where somehow the oil fill cap on a 70's Chevy valve cover had gotten misplaced in storage, & the mice for some reason decided under the valve cover was a good place for a nest... also had to replace the clutch ***embly in my wifes OT Camaro, when the lil red pine squirrels packed her cluch housing full of walnuts, which we didn't know, & drove it to town to replace the tires, after many years of storage... always pays to pull a few covers & inspect before running anything that has sat for a while
Great question. My '77 Harley sportster was low on oil and i found myself standing in a gas station calling my grease-monkey friends and those ****heads didn't know either. So having a 50-50 shot i grabbed high detergent 30 wt. Seems like most oil is just oil unless it's not. The old ironhead is fine and i paid about half what i would if the bottle had said Harley on it.
I never ran harley oil in my Hawgs unless I was at the dealer needed oil and someone gave me a quart. I ran Champion spark plugs as well because Willy G told me that Champion made harley plugs and I may as well save a couple of bucks. Ran Aeroshell for a couple of years because it was good oil and easy to find but ultimately went back to Castroll. The thing is that it is not the name of the oil it is the composition.
Ah geez not this again. Heavy duty detergent oil has been available since the late 40s. Cars with hydraulic lifters were always recommended to use it to prevent the lifters sludging up. From the fifties through the eighties 10W30 detergent oil was the default choice of every garage and dealership in the country. Chances are your old car never used anything else. But, if the previous owner was a ***** and listen to all his ***** friends ******** about good ol' non detergent straight 30 oil the engine could be sludged up. Take the oil pan off if possible and clean it out. Likewise the valve covers. Then fill it with Shell Rotella 15W40. This is about the only commonly available oil that still has zinc in it. Or use diesel rated oil, it has zinc. The zinc protects heavily loaded parts in pushrod OHV valve trains. The new OHC and roller lifter engines don't need it but your engine does.
I recently attended an oil seminar put on by Lake Speed Jr from Joe Gibbs oil... learned a whole lot. FYI... I don't use Gibbs oil... but you can learn a lot from taking a look. http://joegibbsdriven.com/trainingcenter/index.html
Krooser, I read a very interesting article by Lake Sped Jr. about oil. Did he explain how detergents and zinc compete to coat bare metal in a new engine? He said to ALWAYS break in a new or rebuilt engine with non detergebt oil, with zinc.
Not likely you are going to find non detergent oil in todays market. It used to be real common when I was young but pretty hard to find anymore. I used to use castrol breakin oil when I worked for Hap Jones. It smelled real good. I think you can still get it if you ask around. I still run castrol off the shelf in my stuff and recommend it when I do an engine for someone. There is a code to look for on the oil contaner, but I don't remember what it is. maybe one of the fellas does and wouldn't mind sharing it with the rest of us.
NAPA sells a "marked" non detergent oil only in straight 30 ( at my local NAPA ) it's what I run in my 38 Nash, since it doesn't have an oil filter
Years ago I took off the valve covers on a 283 chevy...they were packed with sludge and I had to use a teas**** to scoop out the sludge from between the valve springs and rockers....each cover was about two pounds heavier than clean ones!...I took off the intake manifold and it was miserable in there too....cleaned out as much **** as possible and dropped the oil pan...same thing...filled the crankcase with 50% kerosene and 10W-30 motor oil...ran it around town a few miles and drained the pan...did this several times...new oil filter, SAE 30W oil and the only time it smoked was when you shifted gears...just a small puff...the moral of this story is this: DO NOT USE NON DETERGENT MOTOR OIL...especially if you never change it.
Um... I don't think that was from non detergent oil ( if the stuff was actually stuck to the valve covers rather than just in the valleys like you indicated... "each cover was about two pounds heavier than clean ones" ) if you read my earlier post about the Penzoil ( which was an early detergent oil ) non detergent oil will dump particals in all the low areas... what you described sounds like foaming, which I think was common on early detergent oils... & particularly Penzoil in the 60's & early 70's...
I am baffled why anyone would consider running Non- detergent oil in their internal combustion engine??? Non- detergent oil is essentially air compressor oil. You need detergent because of the combustion process that produces carbons and other engine contaminants that turn into sludge. Ya maybe in the early days they didnt have this technology, but just because in 1920 they didnt have it, doesnt mean they did need it. I would run some Kerosene through the engine, then flush it out, and run a good 10 w 40 oil.
my understanding... if you have an oil filter... run detergent oil... if your motor is pre oil filter & you haven't put an aftermarket one on it, run non detergent
Detergent oil and old engines with sludge is always interesting.So none of you ever owned a later model ****box with a sludged up engine? And you changed the oil using a typical modern detergent oil and drove many miles and nothing got worse? Is late model sludge different than early model sludge? How about a cleaning the engine horror story? Pulled the valve cover off an 80's junker and it looked like a Jello mold of ****ing sludge.Spent time carefully cleaning it up.A few days later,10 degrees F on a snowy morning the Jeep won't push any oil pressure...Pull the oil pan in an unheated garage to find the oil pick up totally plugged with fresh goo.Maybe it was there waiting to happen or maybe it was my sludge clean up....Treat a sludge motor like a sore ****,don't **** with it ......unless you pull it all apart.
If your engine was built after WW2 chances are it never had anything but detergent oil in it. From the fifties to the present time, if you wanted non detergent oil, you had to ask for it. All garages and dealerships used detergent oil, except VW, because the early detergent oil did not stand up in an air cooled motor. So, if you buy an old car and ask, should I use non detergent oil? My question is, why change to non detergent oil now?
I have seen sludged up motors but it was not because of non detergent oil. They all got detergent oil, when they got oil. The trouble was they did not get oil changes often enough. Changing the old dirty detergent oil for fresh detergent oil never caused a problem. Trying to clean out the old sludge, now that can cause a problem.
High parafin based oils like quaker state will sludge one up worse than a low parafin based oil like castrol or aeroshell. I helped a friend pull a small block ford out of a cougar down in the '90s. The fella that owned it and had done two things wrong by my way of thinking. One he had never changed the oil after the initial service, he did install a toilet paper filter and said he didn't need to change the oil because he changed the toilet paper oil once a month. The second was that he always used havoline, no offense to the texans. Anyway we pulled the pan first and it was so full of sludge that the crank throws left an impression in it. Naaaasty.
I know a guy that bought an old John Deere tractor that had ND oil in it, and apparently a ton of sludge and goo inside. He did the tune up thing, got it running pretty decent, and then decided to change the oil.... Put in HD oil and some Rislone. He said the thing ran for about an hour and then started knocking. The crud (loosened up and circulated by the HD oil) went all thru the engine and took out the bearings, scored the cylinders, basically ruined the engine. 20 years ago I got an IH 330 tractor, and went thru it doing the general maintenance stuff that apparently had never been done since it was new in '57. I took off the pan, and the pickup screen on the oil pump was clogged with a rock-hard varnish. There was one small hole about 1/4" diameter where the oil was still getting thru. That varnish was amazingly hard and tough to get out of the screen, I had to sand blast it and it took time to 'wear it away'! The pan had about 1" of grey-black 'pudding' in the bottom, and the fact that some 'mechanic' removed the thermostat years ago didn't help at all. Clean out your engine very well before putting in any new HD oil dk
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