Valvoline VR1 oil

Since I'm a newbie, I can't offer much on this but I asked Carey at SE/Beck what he recommends and he said he uses Brad Penn Grade 1 Racing Oil.

Pete

I am not a expert, but for normal driving, oil is oil. 

I cannot help but laugh at myself when I think about the fact that my daily drivers are constantly abused by short and often dusty trips in the most severe weather (temps of -20 to over 100) and use store brand oils and filters that are changed at 7000 miles or more ...

and the pets are only given the best synthetics  and driven under the most ideal conditions with adequate warm ups and cool downs.   

Hey Bart,

I do think there is a difference.  I have only owned 2 brand new cars in my life. One was a Honda Civic, I used Mobil 1 in it until I had over 200 thousand on it then used a lesser oil.  When I sold it I had 360+ thousand on it and it was still going.  I did have to put in 3 clutches, 2 CVC joints and 10 rear muffers though

So that kinda helped me make up my mind and use the newer oils or what folks recommend.  But you may be right too...

Pete

I am sure there is some data out there, but my own experience is that I have two old trucks (one Chevy and one Ford) with more than 120,000 miles each and they run like Rolexes and I have a small collection of pets that get driven less than 1000 miles a year each under ideal circumstances and they get the very best....kind of like a mistress !!!   

Don't let your wife read this, Bart.

Terry, that reminds me of the Boss Tweed quote ...... " I don't give a damn what you write about me, my constituents can't read ".

Our air cooled engines need oil with a higher zinc content.  VR1 has that.

I have a case of Brad Penn sitting in my garage, but it has been recommended that I not use synthetic oil while I'm breaking in the rings. 

VR1 is a dino.

That's fine, it is your engine... but VW sez that lead is not necessary in the US since about 1966. 

I feed a air cooled 993 Mobil One as recommended and the cost of the oil is not really a factor as the interval is so long and the labor cost is so high. 

Now a Porsche engine is about 15k so it is nothing to ignore.

I am sure I will do what JPS recommends when I get my Coupe...

Lead and zinc are two different things.  I believe that the zinc is recommended because it better lubricates the flat tappets in older style engines.

Yes, lead is not needed, but these engines do require zinc in the oil.

"Our air cooled engines need oil with a higher zinc content.  VR1 has that.

I have a case of Brad Penn sitting in my garage, but it has been recommended that I not use synthetic oil while I'm breaking in the rings. 

VR1 is a dino."

Brad Penn has a "break in" oil just for that purpose that I used for the first 800 miles. Seems to have worked well.

 Funny thing,I dont use any zinc oil in my car,the only time it had any zinc was when the motor was assembled .that cam& lifter combo has around 60000+miles on them. yes you do need good oil. a little zinc shouldent hurt but too much will.  And racing oil is for racing.
    I wont use racing oil in a street motor, I doubt it has the correct addtive package in it, and there engines are far from racing engines so to speak. More like a lawn mower engine, witch also have flat tappets like vw.  Why would you put racing oil in a non racing engine?in a non racing attmospher?in a non racing situation?in a non racing rpm/load agenda? IMHO dead cams are a result of the builder not prepping the parts good.( and preping dosent mean blowing the dust off&wiping some goose **** or whatever you choose on it for protection) an assembler is not a builder.And not all builders are created equaly just as not all oils work for all engines. just being slipery dosent make an oil a good choice, clorox bleach is plenty slipery, but I doubt it would work for a lubricant in  a I.C.E. for very long.

  For the most part use a good name brand oil, and filter and change them as needed. If you feal more comfertable use some oil with some zync in it like the quakerstate, deffy.it's cheep and will probably do as good as the zr1 or any other oil out there and you can afford to change it offten. I change mine usualy between 10000&12000 miles in november at thanksgiving time.it's a thanks giving present to my car for giving me such great service& never needing any thing done unexpectedly,I also check the valve adjustments then,but they dont seem to need adjustments. good oil or good engine building&prepping the parts for thier intended app?well I usualy switch oil brands every time I change the oil.but I always stay with a name brand oil, well I do use the cheepest oil I can find for the first 2 oil changes(about 1 hour total run time and it's on to the 3rd oil/filter change and gooder oil)

Yes, I know that....I should have said you don't need either one...but there are others that have a different opinion...fine...like I said, I laugh at myself not others...  

Bart-

I used to think like you. I've had a cam flatten, so I don't think "oil is oil" any more. All oil had zinc (ZDDP) until 5 or 6 years ago, now very few of them do. If you think about what's happening at the cam/lifter junction, where the lifter is doing it's level best to shear the oil film off the cam and grind into the lobe, you can see why a "sacrificial" zinc in the oil l is a good thing.

Mark says it doesn't matter, but Mark also says his engine has roller lifters, so there's that. Mark also compares an ACVW to a lawnmower, but last time I tore a Briggs and Stratton down it didn't have a 1/2" of valve lift, dual valve-springs and it didn't rev to 7000 RPM, so there's that as well. Yeah, a lot of Speedster Type 1s aren't racing motors-- racing motors have a happier life, getting shut down before they have a chance to build any heat, and getting rebuilt once or twice a season, as they do. You're hoping your engine will hold together for 50K mi or so. Good luck with that if you run whatever Wal-mart has on the clearance rack.

Do what you want, but forewarned is forearmed.

If you're really interested in oil and its qualities then take a day off work and read this entire thread..  Charles Navarro is an authority on the subject:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com...ate-cj4-sm-oils.html

IMHO if you just cruise your ACVW (like me), oil may not be so critical. Conversely, if you're a large-cc engine, lead-foot kind of driver, then its pay-to-play!

I'm just saying....

the motor of mine I was refering to does not have a roller cam in it ..yet, so there you go and yes some briggs do have that & more & I havent seen them eat up lifters, so there you go, and it is usualy the cam eating the lifters and sheering the oil has nothig to do with it,so there you go..again.    So the racing engines get shut down and have time to cool and the vw dosent...hmm 24 hour races no cool down,500 mile races..no cool down, drag racing, usualy just enough time to cool down a bit but not much as you need some heat in the motor for the next round. but yes they usualy do get a chance to cool down, and they usualy get plenty of oil changes thus all the additives are not needed or required and other fancy things can be added. the best oil in the world and most expensive oil you can find will NOT make up for a piss poor builder or even a good builder that dosent do what is required.

if your lifters are trying to grind into your cam you need help and oil probably isant it(unless you happen to own a few oil producing oil wells and $$$ mean nothing like some that spout off how much thier glass bodied vw is worth to them in thier mind and piss and moan because somebody sells one cheeper and they are skeered that has effed up the value of thier car.And that makes a lot of cents.

  and my vw's get lots of long run times and lots of short run times, some time to cool, some no time to cool.

 if you know something about vw cams&aftermarket vw cams lets hear it & see what is what. how many oe vw cams have you seen dead?from the oil used,not lack of oil or not changing the oil.but from no zinc in the oil. do you realize the chevy motors have a lot smaller dia lifter and a lot more spring pressure due to the rocker ratio, yes they also kill cams sometimes, but then again they probably were not preped properly.I cant ever remember loosing a flat tappet cam due to oil, or any thing else, I have machined&built a few hundrad engines,mostly performance engines ( about 98%).about 80% were flat tappet engines.I know how to prep a camshaft, it takes a good amount of time, not tomuch, but some time, and most builders/assemblers are not willing/aware/or even know how or to do it at all. Very few armchair internet engine builders know how to ,have done so, know to do so, or even know the reason for doing it.and why should they, And why would a good engine builder tell them what they effedup by not doing so.or tell them to do it.if bubba down the road is building motors in his bathroom for 1/8th of what I charge because I told him how to make his motor work&last I'll be going out of bizzness soon wont I. well I dont building for other people now,I have retired. and I have seen more effedup stuff that you could eventhink of.usualy by that same ole feller that reads all those magzines to become an exspert.

 no all cams wont go south with out prepping them...but why not do it right&never worry about it?.unless your just slapping **** togeather, than it dosent matter, you will have **** nomater what you do with it.

If it makes you feal all warm&fuzzy yes use some zinc in your oil but dont over do it.

It does. I will. I won't.

Bwaaaa Haaaaaa - well played, Sir! 

In all seriousness, Mark- I've always respected your history and knowledge. But the thing is: you know as well as anybody that oil's not the same as it was a few years ago, and cams are flattening out more than they were when oil had ZDDP in it. I don't know why that is, but people were going nuts a few years back and buying hard-weld cams and ceramic lifters from Europe (until they couldn't get them any more). Overkill? Probably, but the camshaft is buried pretty deeply in the case in a flat 4, so there's some interest in doing what we can.

I'm sure the proper cam prep really helps-- but back in the day, my shop-head buddies and I did just about everything possible wrong rebuilding all sorts of stuff, and never had a cam go flat either. The oil is different now... the cams may be too, I don't know-- but the oil is for sure.

Did I mention "off-the-shelf" oil is different now? E-thay oil-ay is-ay iffernt-day. El aceite es diferente. Das Öl ist anders.

I'm not suggesting that everybody go out and go nuts dumping two GM ZDDP additive packs in with their Joe Gibbs oil, but the VR1 oil Ron was recommending is not "an oil well in the back yard" expensive, or anything else special. It's a readily available oil from pretty much everywhere for $5/qt.

I can buy Brad Penn for $5/qt as well. As an aside-- the Brad Penn oil is not some black-magic exotic "racing" elixir that God himself runs in his flat-tappet engine, it's pretty much just the same old Kendall multi-viscosity oil from back in the day. It's the same kind of oil that you ran in all the flat-tappet V8s you built before 5 years ago.

The average guy with a 1.5 qt deep sump and a remote filter uses what? 5 qts of oil? What does house-brand oil cost? $4/qt? I'm not sure why you're being so contrarian about this-- it's 5 bucks difference for the entire oil change. If a guy skips one double moca-choka, extra-skinny latte, he can pay for the difference.

I don't think ZDDP additive oil is the be-all and end-all. I think it's $5/qt, and it's one more thing that can be done to perhaps extend the life of an engine. Like I said before-- if I guy wants to run something else: fantastic!

... but it's good to be aware that the stuff off-the-shelf at Auto-Zone, etc. doesn't have the same additives that all good oils had until a few years ago. That's all I'm saying.

For Bridget, nothin' but straight 3-in-One.

Nothin' but the finest!

When I read Mark's stuff I just can't get Mater's voice out of my head.

$5.53qt delivered to your door. 

http://www.amazon.com/Valvolin...ywords=valvoline+vr1

Can I still have my mocha choka latte?

I paid $5.97 @ qt.(Cdn)

I plan on using break in oil for 300 to 500 miles, then switching to VR1 for the next 2000 miles.  Then, I'll either continue on with VR1, or go synthetic (Brad Penn).

I have 2 ACVW now,had 3,and used VR-1 in all of them,when I do the valve adjustment they are almost all the same and need very littel adjustment. I also use the VR1 in my old BMW flat tappet motorcycles.