Technical Break in oil was not enough

7 pages about oil, lets hope we don't get into coolant.

 

They're not all ground on a single machine.

 

It’s when the coolant gets in the oil that you have a problem.

 

Yes I agree, but you are talking about machines which are all designed for extremely precise work that should be done in a controlled environment and verified by inspection equipment more precise than a hand held micrometer. I don't know what they currently use with all the new technology, but we used to put radius parts on a machine called a shadow graph. Looked like a giant bombsight. A light shone over the part and reflected a shadow on to a huge screen with calibrated markings. It was simple to do and the large size made it simple to see what the radius was.

 

Already have - https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/antifreeze-shenanigans.1281736/

 

These threads used to run no coolant just water. They'd boil over, mods or Ryan come in and freeze them, all the blocks crack, game over.

 

They were. Then the work was off shored to the lowest bidder, using whatever tooling was on hand. Now they’re built to a price point, quality is less of a concern.

 

In Diesel Engine Space, oil formulations, they use Actual Diesel Engines in the Industry Tests. Several OEMs participate to support the testing with production spec iron. Pay close attention to RFWT.. for those who think roller cams are bullet proof. Especially if bushed.

https://www.swri.org/diesel-engine-based-lubricant-testing.

 

Glad to see someone still remembers me from my BITOG days! Greeting from our benighted little wet island.

If anyone wants to ask anything about ZDDP or engine oils in general, ask away....

 

Most of the formulation work I did was on PCMO. However I did occasionally paddle in the HDDO pool. When I did, I used the same mixed primary/secondary ZDDP I always used, which was invariably the cheapest.

It might also be worth pointing out that people like me tended to view ZDDP as an antioxidant first & an anti-wear second. Same thing goes with Moly additives.

 

Yes I was also wondering.

I mean, all those cam grinders that are around for decades - for grinding cams that have no or the wrong taper - wouldn't that require a proactive change in the machine setup? Why would a experienced cam grinder do that?

Same for the lifters. Someone has to say "nah - lets make them really flat from now on"

So some decisions had to be made.
Who made this decisions and why - It's still a mystery for me.

And actually.... I'm not really buying that "source out to the lowest" thing.
When you spend quite an amount of money to have something made, you want it to work at least till the warranty expires, or else you loose all that money.

This is true for the whole chain from distributors like Summit down to the sweatshop that does the lifters. They all loose money, when they got send back.

Frank

 

It would be interesting to know the industry wide failure rate , it may be within acceptable limits for the industry ? It may be a bit " over published" on the internet ! Without accurate numbers , speculation runs amok !

 

Thanks for participating here. For hot rodders engine oils, and other lubes but especially engine oil, are a hot topic. A lot of misinformation, urban legend, and tribal knowledge continues to get passed around, just like a bad penny it just keeps coming around.

 

It could be wear on the equipment, misadjustment, or just poor set ups. Back to the question that was asked, why 1 or 2 lobes fail on a cam and not all of them, well why do just 1 or 2 main or rod bearings fail and not all of them; why does 1 or 2 pistons score and not all of them; I could go on. This is the nature of equipment failure, rarely will you see all like parts fail at the same time, though you often will see a wear pattern on parts that if studied will point to a cause of failure. That is rarely done in the automotive world, is more common in the heavy duty business, Cat is recognized as a leader in post failure analysis and their training dept teaches this practice. I've taken the course some years ago, that is another of the certifications I have. And post failure analysis is taken to another higher level in the manufacturing/industrial business where finding the root cause of failure goes beyond why determining why certain parts failed to study what management processes exist that allowed conditions to get to the point that failure occurred. But when something fails on a car the usual practice is to just repair/replace it and never give much though to why it happened to begin with, let alone conduct a study on it; which is why we're in the situation we are with cam failures; nobody has ever really figured out the true cause(s), it's all pretty much assumptions based on anecdotes and WAG's. Just blame the oil and move on...

 

If it's any consolation, a lot of what passes for received wisdom in the engine oil business, is, when you dig deep, just so much bogus pseudo-science! For example detergents don't actually 'deterge' anything & dispersants don't really 'disperse' gasoline sludge.

 

You know I remember the days prior to BITOG, when Bob was a Schaeffer Oil sales rep that participated on the old Noria discussion forum, and decided to start his own board. It's good to have someone with your background and experience sharing here.

 

Are you sure? They booted me off BITOG three times, with the last one being a proper lifetime ban! I will endeavour to not be too beastly to people (but honestly... sometimes they really DO deserve it!).

 

i didnt read all seven pages. what i do to break in a engine is first make sure the tappets spin. without oil i rotate the cam by hand watching to make sure all the tappets rotate. there cant be any tight spots in the lifter bores. i remove the inner valve springs. i run the engine at 2500rpm for ten minutes. after a little cool down time i do it two more times. i then retorque the heads; reset the lash and reinstall the inner springs. the filter gets cut open for a look as well. it must work because i never rounded a lobe.

 

It's a bit before my time but back in the '90s, Volkswagen had a specific Cam & Tappet rig test that you needed to pass in order to formally qualify an oil against the VW 500/501/505 oil specifications. If memory serves, the parts were what you'd find on the old Beetle engine & it was a fairly consistent test for measuring wear.

However as time passed (ie when I needed to run the test in the 2000s) the test became an absolute nightmare for formulators. Really high spec oils would routinely fail. The failures were nothing to do with the oil & everything to do with the parts used. As the Beetle engine died a natural death in Europe, the parts for the test were increasingly sourced from Mexico & 'chocolate cam syndrome', a result of poor metallurgy & bad surface hardening set in with a vengeance.

I know conventional thinking is you need a high Zinc/high Moly oil for engine break-in but I'm not clear that's the case. Additives like these should be be seen as things to preserve the oil's performance over the long-term (10,000 miles-ish), not necessarily something that instantly kicks in.

 

That's a good insite on problems with the test materials, and it sounds eerily familiar with the common cam/lifter failures seen in the field.

I'm not clear on the whole high zinc for engine break-in either, but it is the standard recommendation from the entire camshaft production industry; and the defacto go-to when something fails. It's easy to blame the oil...

 

All it takes is one worn lifter bore. Then it has nothing to do with a lifter. A slot in a rocker. A nut out of adjustment. A cup on the end dimpled a thousand off. The tip wearing funny off the valve stem. Valve stem worn/ground short.
But as far as hardness goes, not knowing Jack, classified as a SAE man, I think it's a false narrative.

I base it not on being an expert, knowledgeable on oils and lubrication, although it's consideration shouldn't be forgotten, but on my limited understand on metallurgy and thousands of an inch.

But if you want to do some simple hardness testing, ask yourself first what are you testing the hardness for? Pressure to resist deformation? Wear due to erosion? Impact?

Maybe if it's too hard it won't spin and rotate? WTF eh? Becomes slippery it's so hard?

That's SAE talking shit right there. lol.

 

It sat for over a month and heard some of those high mile lifters make some noise so it probably should have gotten a new set but was afraid of something happening so after driving it next summer will see how it goes.

 

I know absolutely nothing about hot-rodding. I have zero interest in cars. I have never, ever rebuilt an engine & it's forty years since I last wielded a spanner in anger. Please bear this in mind when reading what follows...

This thread is about problems of excessive cam/lifter wear that can arise during engine break-in. There are two possible causes; the quality of parts & the quality of the oil used. My instincts are that the primary culprit will be the parts with the engine oil simply being guilty by association. However let's put parts quality to one side & ask what makes for a good break-in oil? For what they're worth, these are my thoughts...

I spent many years designing the slippery stuff. When I finally threw in the towel, I worked out I could lay claim to about one billion litres a year of global engine oil. However not once did the subject of running-in oils ever cross my desk. Which is odd as a running-in oil is conceptually a very different beastie from a conventional engine oil. Normally important things like oil cold flow properties, oxidative resistance & fuel economy matter not a jot for a running-in oil, which will likely get dumped after a few hundred miles. Likewise, things that would be seen as 'bad' for a conventional oil might actually be 'good' for a running-in oil.

If someone said, design me the perfect running-in oil, this is what I come up with...

1) a heavy oil with little or no VII polymer. Maybe a 20W40 based primarily on 600SN base oil. If you want oil film thickness, this is the way to go.

2) an oil based on old-fashioned, solvent extracted Group I base oil. Arguably you want lots of sulphur & nitrogen (for surface reactivity) & aromatics (for solvency) in a break-in oil. In fact I might even base the oil on the ultra low VI extract you would normally reject from a solvent extraction plant!

3. I'd use say 1% heavy C6 secondary ZDDP for wear. I might even throw in some heavy C8 primary ZDDP that usually only gets used in Industrial applications

4. Maybe a bit of heavy ester (oleamide) for oil stickage.

5. Some uncapped, highly seal aggressive dispersant & a heavy salicylate detergent (the kind you use in ship engines).

Would such an oil work? Absolutely no idea but it might be fun to find out.

 

Really interesting insights Joe - keep em coming, I just startet digging into this stuff and nothing is better than information coming from someone who is actually doing this for a living.

But all this was also true in the 80s and 90s when I started working on engines. They didn't have magic pushrods and lifter bores back than, though we didn't have those cam problems. I don't think that's the issue.

Frank

 

I thought (maybe should look into it) cams and lifter faces were surfaced hardened? If they are, a Rockwell test on a worn lobe/lifter wouldn’t be of use.
Regardless, I’d rather deal with a collapsed roller lifter than an eaten one.

 

This sounds very reasonable rx. In having a discussion with a fellow from Driven I was a little surprised to see his variation on break-in, mainly in duration;
"break it in on the stand for a good 45mins, between 2000-3000 rpm varied. After initial run in, change oil and filter using the same break in oil and filter. Avoid idling as much as possible and drive it for around 400 miles mainly to get it under a load and into heat cycles. Then change oil to regular use choice. Of course, he is selling oil.

 

Bingo! I made this point back in post #126, before we ever heard that the author of the Hot Rod mag article was the famous Lake Speed Jr, who also happens to work for Driven Oil. What a coinkydink!

Hey, maybe the guy you talked to was the man himself, the guy that is "second to none" according to the other guy who can't figure out why 1 or 2 lobes/lifters fail instead of the whole cam.

 

In my best Rod Serling;

"Imagine if you will, an engine meticulously assembled with attention to detail. Now imagine some of the new most important and anticipated parts failed in spite of those gallant efforts. Now the magic spinning finger is still in rotation looking for blame. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to 'The HAMB Cafe Zone'...

It ain't the oil. It ain't the break in. Shitty parts. Bad parts. Junk processes. Lack of investment into QC in manufacturing process. Some licknob who's job and it was to completely spec the part forgot an important detail and is now too busy trying to cover his ass to figure out where he went wrong and correct it. Further, he gives less fucks about oil, lifter base contour, cost to the consumer, the ripple effect in the industry cuz he's too busy trying to plan his weekend circle jerk and trying to avoid getting caught. Oil schmoil, shit parts.
Show of hands again, who knows you could actually lube a running engine in a constant flow of cold water? Not for hundreds of miles but lube nonetheless. Remember those dumbass infomercials that showed the guy running the engine and says "...and even in a spray of water!" Duh, ok. Yup yup yup...

This is fun shit tho...