Oil vs Synthetic Oil for cam wear

[V6 Beast]

I was talking to a cam manufacturer about my recent cam de-lobing and we got into a discussion of oil. He nearly had a coronary when I told him I used sythetic oil. He said to never use synthetic oil on a car with a flat tappet cam. He said it may be too slippery and cause the lifter to not spin properly which may cause it to retain heat and de-lob itself prematurely.

Anyone every hear of this or experience it or have any thoughts.


Sully

 

[tc86gn]

Never heard that one before!

 

[REDS HOT AIR]

i never will again... to many problems with stuff after going to synthetic... i'll stick with regular valvoline

 

[steve hughes]

I've heard this from cam manufacturers. Was it broken in with synthetic?

 

[V6 Beast]

No it was broken in with regular Penzoil... It didn't get synthetic until it had about 1500 miles on it.

Sully

 

[tc86gn]

1500 miles is a little too early to switch to synthetic. about 5,000 is more like it.

 

[bruce]

Originally posted by V6 Beast
He nearly had a coronary when I told him I used sythetic oil. de-lob itself prematurely.
Anyone every hear of this or experience it or have any thoughts.

Several years ago there were a couple cast roller cams that were sold for the GNs. I was one of the lucky ones that bought into the deal. While folks were having immediate failures, and most all were seriously dead in less then 2K, I was at 6K before noticing ANY damage.
And I was using
Valvoline 40W Racing.
Just old dino oil.
So far, I've been running just ol valvoline for 30 years, and have no complaints.

The syns with their miracle of thin visocity just means you have less of an oil film on the crank rods and cam when you fire a cold engine. That has never sounded like a good idea to me.

 

[BoostKillsStres]

My GN's got 109K on the clock and I had to go in to do the timing chain thing and decided to check the cam while I was in there. I used a dail indicator at the pushrod w/ the shafts off to check max lift and checked each lobe several times to get a max reading and it came out to an average of .009 wear across the entire cam. I bought the car with 53K on it and started running synthetic at that point. I don't consider that to be very much wear after 109K with changes every 5K as some are missing lobes at that point, the cam stayed in. I'd like to go to a roller at some point but not until the stock cam is used up or the engine comes out.

I currently like the Havoline 10w-30 synthetic as it was $2.99 at Advance Auto every day but I think its found its way into the $3 range now.

And as a side note at startup the cam isn't dry as if you've ever been under the car w/ the oil pan off you can see nice fat drops of oil hanging on the bottom of each lobe waiting to be spun around at initial startup. And even after 3 months there still there, yes I was very slow doing the bottom end but had to change rods and mains from under the car as the TC sent alum. through the bearings before I caught it and they looked just bad enough where I wanted to change them, what a job!!!. Will finally be running again this weekend