I've been out of the loop on old car stuff for a while, but have finally started getting back into it. I've heard and read about a number of people experiencing camshaft failure, especially with hotter cams, most likely from the lower zinc content in the newer style oils. Anyone here have any troubles? Anyone do any tests or checks of different oils? I don't drive my pickup very often, but it's still in tip top shape and would like to keep it that way. What's the best oil available? What's the best bang for the buck oil available?

 

The modern engine oils have less zinc in them which is what causes flat tappet cams to wear out quicker. In my first pull truck 460 I used a regular oil with a zinc additive for a soild flat tappet cam, but that didn't see a whole lot of hours before it was rebuilt.

 

I use diesel oil in mine.

 

IMHO.......

While there are some cam failures cause by start-up/break-in error, cam lobes that are of a street type profile should not be completely worn out in 10,000-30,000 miles- and while just about every cam mfg recommends adding ZDDP (and sells) to the oil, I still highly suspect Parkerizing is not done by some and the billets are of Chinese origin with inferior properties, specifically low carbon- which would explain the proneness to lobe failure (lack of carbon reduces the harness of the steel)....The one company that seems to be the "King" of this is Comp...which I consider a mass production (McDonald's type) company & they do not include Parkerizing their cams unless you want to pay extra for it (Parkerizing is the final step and a crucial step to help break the cam in- a heated acid bath that microscopically etches the metal surface and adds a very thin layer of graphite coating which allows the cam lube to hang onto and penetrate into the cam surface during cam break in). Isky, crower, etc. just don't seem to have anywhere near the same issues.

To reduce cat converter contamination, the ZDDP in the oils was reduced from around 2000 ppm to about 700 ppm (including diesels), which the engineers advise this is plenty for any engine......but this reduction has paralleled with the increase of flat tappet cam failures, valve tick, etc. The one thing that the aftermarket cam mfgs & machinists agree upon is engines need about 1400 ppm of ZDDP, the newer engines (modulars) with cats, about 1000 ppm. While the oil companies disagree, they added Boron to the oils as a "wear reducer".

After talking with Ron Eskenderian, (yes, Isky Racing Cams), ) I add one bottle of ZDDP to my old school engines (1965 289) and 1/3 of a bottle to my mod motors with each oil change.

 

Beechkid, that's what I was figuring from what I've been reading. I found a post, don't remember where now, of a guy who did a lot of testing of oils, and had the zddp levels with all the additives listed. Many of the oils had low zinc amounts but still had super high film shear psi. In my mind the high shear would be more important than the zddp level, but I'm not sure.

 

Same here, holding up well and I beat the crap out of it. I also run Lucas oil stabilizer, Shell Rotella T 15w40.