russell-t

I am considering using Royal Purple Synthetic Oil in my 63 Cutlass Olds 215 v8

engine. I don't see where there would be a problem with this, BUT there's still

a doubt if I'm doing the engine good...or harming it. Has anyone used this

oil or any other synthetic oil in their older engines? Am I worrying too much

about this? Will I still need a zinc additive?

BangScreech4-4-2

I've never used anything but dino juice in my cars as I don't let the mileage pile up between oil changes so extended change intervals don't enter into the equation, and I don't beat on any of them hard enough to merit the higher level of protection.


Why do you think you need synthetic?


Regardless, you will still need zinc, although some of the specialty suppliers like Joe Gibbs or Royal Purple may make a synthetic with ZDDP in it.

drop top olds

If you must use a synthetic there are better brands than royal purple. I agree with the above though ^^^^^ Why use it in your application?

Pay close attention to the additive package. You will need something for a hydraulic lifter engine (unless it was converted).

Tedd Thompson

I have used synthetic in my 55 and it worked as expected....But it caused my car to leak like a new puppy. I don't think synthetics like cork gaskets and oil finds it way out through them....Just my experience....Tedd

Ozzie

While I haven't used a synthetic in a 215, I have, like Tedd, used it in a '55 Olds and other old vehicles. I was satisfied with the performance. It may be more than is needed, but still should be O.K. for the engine. Some believe that the synthetic helps compensate for the diminished zinc content, but I'm a bit old fashioned and would still like to have enough of the zinc. Zinc additives are available. The hard part is finding out how much zinc concentration is in any particular batch of oil if the manufacturer doesn't do disclosure.

slantflat

Royal Purple has a line of oil called HPS and it has zinc in it, and is advertised for older cars needing zinc. I use RP in my Silverado. I don't know if it's any better or not than any other synthetic oil.


If your 215 is turbocharged I would tend to think a synthetic would hold up better, especially if you run it hard it wouldn't coke as bad.


An alternative, which is what I use in my old cars, is Brad Penn. Semi-synthetic with zinc, and it's a little cheeper. Of course you can't just find it anywhere. I get mine at Summit.

MDchanic

Synthetic oil will not hurt your car, and will provide improved protection, but whether you will ever obtain any real benefits from that improved protection is questionable.

Most agree that because of its excellent slipperiness, it will, as Tedd noted, worm its way through your gaskets and show you all of the tiny leaks that you never knew you had.

- Eric

bob p

The meaning of the term "synthetic" differs depending on where you are in the world. In the USA the term "synthetic" means something totally different than it used to mean in the USA, and what it currently means by law in Germany.

The change occurred because companies like Castrol have expanded the meaning of the term "synthetic" in order to change it from a chemistry term to a marketing term like "SynTec". To a chemist the term "synthetic" oil means Group IV or V base oils that are chemically synthesized/assembled to build a long-chain hydrocarbon from short chain chemical building blocks; this is the essence of the legal meaning of the term as it is used in other countries. Some of the less scrupulous oil companies and the advertising industry in the USA have corrupted the meaning of the term "synthetic" so that it can also include Group III base oils that are fractured during the process of refining crude oil. The bottom line is that isn't enough to look at a label and buy "synthetic" oil. You have to pay close attention to the characteristics of the base oil and the additive packages so that you know exactly what you're buying. It's not as if all "synthetic" oils are equivalent, just because they all have a variant of the word "synthetic" on the bottle.


Be very wary of the "extended oil change interval" nonsense. EOCI has nothing to do with providing enhanced protection for your car -- in fact, EOCI is likely to do the opposite. Bear in mind that the particulate contaminants in your motor oil are a significant factor in promoting engine wear, and the whole idea behind the traditional 3000 mile OCI is to remove small, non-filtered, particulate contaminants from your oil system. Removing particulate contaminants remains as important today as it always has been, because automotive oil filters are only designed to trap 40-micron(or larger) particles, while eliminating 5-micron to 10-micron particles has been shown to prolong engine life by 8x. No kidding.

http://www.machinerylubrication.com/...***-filtration

There are two ways to achieve elimination of the 5-um to 10-um particles. You can install a supplemental small particle oil filter, or you can just change your oil at frequent intervals.

Beware of the EOCI recommendations in vehicles that aren't undergoing supplemental filtration. EOCI is fine if you're actively removing the 5-10 um particles with a engine oil bypass filtration, but really bad if you just let 5-10 micron particles accumulate in your oil for 20,000 miles.

So why are today's car manufacturers recommending EOCI? It's an EPA mandate, just like the use of ILSAC GF-5 0W-20 motor oil. Of course we know that 0W-20 motor oil isn't about adding protection to your engine -- it's about decreasing exhuast emissions. Similarly, EOCI is all about decreasing our consumption of motor oil, it's not about providing improved protection for our engines.

I remember reading another article published in the trade journal Machinery Lubrication several years ago, which said that the EOCI recommendations in the auto industry were the result of an EPA requirement to decrease our consumption of motor oil. As far as the EPA is concerned, EOCI means that we use less oil, and that's good for the environment. Car manufacturers have jumped on the EOCI bandwagon for EPA compliance, for marketing reasons, and because they know that any oil-related failures caused by EOCI will end up occurring after the car is out of warranty, which makes it our problem, not theirs. This creates a situation where we need to become well informed, so that we don't take bad advice that is being pushed on us.

My personal recommendation would be to avoid the use of EOCI in any vehicle that doesn't also have a supplemental 5-10 micron engine oil bypass filtration system installed. All things considered, frequent oil changes are still a good idea if you plan to continue using the standard 40-micron filters, as that purges the small wear-inducing particles rather than allowing them to accumulate.

BangScreech4-4-2

Looks like that one was kind of in your wheelhouse, Bob. Interesting post -- thanks!

bob p

edit: i was going to add this info to the previous post, but it was getting kind of long. i hope that you'll find it useful.

There is a reason that they're not doing disclosure -- they don't want you to know how crappy the new API SM/SN and ILSAC GF-5 oils really are. Most oil companies don't make it easy for you to find the additive pack numbers for their oils. Mobil1 publishes it all in one place, Shell sprinkles the information across the different spec sheets for each individual product, and most other companies don't even publish the numbers.

There is a disturbing trend, where the amount of the additive packs in motor oils is being limited by the EPA, and the API standards are being changed to reflect these limits. The result is that the latest group of API oils like SM/SN have severely lower amounts of ZDDP than we want for our cars, and the viscosity grades are also being lowered in the name of making the oils "energy conserving." The result is that you really have to shop around for motor oil, and you may not be able to find what you really want on the store shelves because the quality of today's motor oil has quietly been decreasing. It's only gotten worse with the ILSAC GF-5 classification and the industry's move to 0W-20. GF-6 will be even worse. If you didn't start stockpiling the old-spec motor oils when the EPA first began to mandate changes, then your only option might be to use today's lower viscosity oils plus an additive pack. The really smart guys who saw what was coming bought Mobil1 15W50 by the pallet, back in the days of the API-SH classification, and hoarded a lifetime supply for all of their cars.

This is an interesting table. It's a matrix that compares all of the current Mobil1 oils, and it shows the difference in ZDDP content:

Mobil1 Oil Product Guide PDF

One of the interesting things that you'll see from this table is that the levels of Zinc and Phosphorous have declined to astonishingly low levels, even in a product like Mobil1, which most people think of as a premium product that provides great protection for your car. Unfortunately, most of the currently available Mobil1 has far less ZDDP than we'd like to see.

This, of course, is the result of an EPA mandate that called for reductions of Zinc and Phosphorous in motor oils in order to prevent damage to catalytic converters. Because of the EPA mandates the industry has responded by decreasing ZDDP content, which is exactly the wrong thing to do for wear protection in our cars. Today, almost everything that you can buy is at a level below the 1200 ppm level that we used to think of as minimally acceptable. As far as Mobil1 products are concerned, the only oils that have a minimally acceptable ZDDP content are the 15W-50, 5W-40 TDT, the motorcycle oils and the racing oils.

This is why many people are moving away from modern API certified automotive oils, and are switching over to the CH/CI rated diesel oils that aren't subject to the additive limitations.

I thought this was an interesting read:

Selecting the Right Motor Oil for the Corvair and Other Engines by Richard Widman

Destructor

In the long run if less oil changes means our cars wear out prematurely then energy and materials are being wasted to manufacture a new vehicle or a new engine when otherwise our cars would have more useful life remaining. In the NE it doesn’t matter much for everyday drivers, most cars rot out long before they wear out.

jensenracing77

I run Brad Penn in my 62 215 and don't have a problem.