Oil questions?

Hey all. So now I know my engine has decent amount of life left and I’m going to keep it for awhile until I decide if I wanna stick with 144 or go to 200 it’s time for a real oil change. Before I didn’t know if the motor worked my step dad couldn’t remember so I put cheap oil in it. Now I wanna take care of it so
I was thinking like Mobil 1 or penzoil conventional 10W30 with ZDDP additives how does that sound to you all? Also is my dad told me that I cannot run AC on a 144 he said there is no way it had the power for it. Is he correct?

Thanks all

I run Shell Rotella T4 10w-30 with no additives. Its a diesel oil and has a good amount of ZDDP which is why i don't put additives in it. Too much ZDDP is not good either for your engine. Also its cheap and its not synthetic. If you put synthetic in it, and your gasket seals aint great, they will seep. Synthetic will find its way into every crevice, which is good, but not if your seals are old and you dont like leaking oil.

Don't switch over to synthetic until you've got a new engine in there. I'm no expert but imo, run a good oil that is as thin as will give you good oil pressure and not leak. If that's 10-30 use that. If it can run 5-20 go for it. If it needs 15-40, do that. But don't run thicker oil than you need. Thinner oil is best so long as you can maintain at least 30 psi at idle, warm. My thought on zddp is that your engine is work hardened and probably fine either way, but it can't hurt to add a small bit of additive to bring it up to 1500-2000 ppm with your oil change.

So here is what they taught us in Tech School, Synthetic oil is man made obviously and as such typically the molecule size for such an oil is smaller than most convetional oils, this typically make the oil act as a thinner oil despite the viscosity, the film strength however is much higher. Dont ask me how this works im no petroleum engineer. :roll:

As such a car that currently has a small leak, if you decide to change to synthetic, becomes a big leak, instead of trying to shove the elephant through the barn door you just let all the dogs out instead. Synthetic is highly superior to conventional in pretty much every facet but if you engine isnt properly taken care of and maintained before the switch then it will only make things worse, which is why most dont switch until they have rebuilt the engine.

On the idea of ZDDP additives in oil, for old cars they definitely cant hurt anything and for the little extra cash are a good ease of mind. Lucas, Penn grade, Valvoline, driven, all offer oils with the additive already and their are several companies that make the additive as a stand alone to add to your favorite oil. I prefer the latter, and use a high quality conventional oil with the additive.

If you ever want some good info on lubricates check out BG products website or Mobil1 both have good technical articles that discuss the differnces and all additives. Idk if they still do but BG used to have a chart where they tested all the different major manufacturers of oil and ranked them based on performance and resistance to sludge and what not was really interesting i thought.