TOPIC:

many newer bikes have a cat in them; zddp will foul a cat; that is why auto oils no longer run it.

Personally I think zddp is awesome for new cam break in, heck I have been told it is REQUIRED, but for weekly use I think old dino-oil will do the trick. (That said, when I get my built motor back together I will run it with zddp oils all the time!)

RonKZ650 wrote:

From what I've gathered through some of my own research is basically the only engines that had any problem from lack of zinc was old V8s with rocker arms that put hundreds of pounds of pressure on the cam lobes. Has anyone actually heard of another instance of cam failure?

Yes, I have read posts about engines with "high lift" cams wiping the lobes in the first hundred miles after rebuilds.

The thing about ZDDP is it forms aprotective barrier at the surface of the metal which reduces wear during start up on critical areas. During start up, oil has drained down and pressure is not there for the first few seconds. Valves are the place where rapid catastrophic failure can occur, but removing ZDDP will also accelerate the gradual wear on other critical points like cylinder walls and bearing faces. ZDDP reduces wear in more places than just cam shaft lobe faces.

The substitutes oil makers put in for ZDDP are typically moly (molybdendum disulphide) and/or PTFE friction reducers which may reduce wear in general operation, but they do not have the same ability to form the barrier that ZDDP does which protects bare metal surfaces at start up.

These old bikes all specd out oil that had ZDDP in it when they were new. If you get Moly into a wet clutch, you're screwed. The Teflon is not much better. I just had to remove a clutch and unclog it from even a little Moly that was in the assembly lube I used when I put the engine back together. I had slippage so bad that when I punched it in third gear the engine reved to 10k and I had to let up on the throttle. After I scrubbed out the clutch everything was fine.

Here is a circa 77 Harley oil ad that says Harley oil is not for Jap bikes. WTF No wonder the older Harleys had a puddle underneath them. Check out the knot in the spout of the old oil can

otakar wrote:

These old bikes all specd out oil that had ZDDP in it when they were new. If you get Moly into a wet clutch, you're screwed. The Teflon is not much better.

I agree, I wasn't recommending using it. I was just pointing out they replaced the ZDDP with something that does NOT do what ZDDP does, which is to form the surface barrier that protects against shear when you have metal-metal contact before the oil gets deployed. Bottom line, taking out the ZDDP means the engine will wear faster. Period. It may be that new car engines with roller cams and whatnot will maybe still make 100k miles before they fall apart, but ZDDP still reduces wear in engines regardless of that. Bottom line, taking out ZDDP increases the life of a $150 component (cat converter) by maybe 50% at the expense of significantly reducing the life of the engine which costs about 50X that much. Maybe that makes sense to some moron in the EPA, but it doesn't make sense to me.

I put some oil in my bike in preperation for first start up after my winter work. I Rotella T (not T5 or T6 which are the synth and semi synth ones) and some of this:

shop.advanceautoparts.com/wcsstore/CVWEB...o_10063_pri_larg.jpg

I could not find any other ZDDP additive around here (canada sux for that) this was all I could find, and it cost me almost 20 bucks...I hope it works!

Boy- You Canucks. Just because the label looks a little different, you question everything Don't you think that these two items just might have something in common??

And this one. I think that 4oz would put you way over the top of the safe zone with the Rotella-T that already has 1250ppm. At 4oz you would be at about 2650ppm. When you change the oil after 500mi go to only 2oz (1950ppm) and when you change the oil after another 1000mi go down to 1oz (1600ppm) and stay there for the life of the bike. This is if you stay with Rotella. After my second oil change I switched to the synthetic Rotella.

yeah yeah...I didn't go back and look at the product you were talking about. I think I messed up though, I think I wasted a bunch of money and followed the instructions and poured the whole bottle in my crankcase! Granted I want protection for my new cams and rings, but can a whole bottle instead of just a couple ounces hurt anything?

With the whole bottle you are at almost 7000ppm What I would do is to drain about 2 Quarts off and add 2 quarts of the junkiest ($0.99) oil you can find. And save the two quarts you remove for the next oil change. If you don't want to pull the oil drain plug than just siphon it out of the fill plug. Make sure that when you remove the 2 quarts that you mix it with 2qts of the same junk oil.

If you do what I mentioned you will still be at about 3000ppm+

Yeah, I still have some Rotella T in the 4 litre jug from this oil change, I will drain a couple litres back into that jug and top up with some Nugold. The rotella is 15W40, can I mix this with 5W40? thats the viscosity of most cheap oils...not to mention does it matter if I mix it with non-diesel oil? Is the only reason for dilluting the ZDDp to save my money, or can this stuff damage anything?