built motor, 20w50 homes

 

AMSOIL Racing Dominator 10W-30 is going to be the Ultimate oil.

There are also problems with running too high a Viscosity oil such as oil starvation on start-up and slowly starving the turbo. Along with a loss of HP

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Regardless of brand, built motor folks always go for something in the 10-40 to 20-50 range.

Keep an eye on your oil pressure if you can, and watch how it changes under extreme heat and load. If stock viscosity oil tends to drop in pressure under your heavy foot then you should most definitely look into a more heavy duty oil.

 

The first part of your statement is not necessarily true... If the bottom end is a tight clearanced or stock clearanced set up, you should stay with a premium quality Synthetic Oil Only, in the recommended Viscosity range.. You want to run the lightest oil possible that provides protection, not the heaviest..

Higher Viscosity oils are not necessary unless you are using a petroleum oil and ragging on it for an hour or more at a time where the petroleum oil will show signs of high temp shear.

A Higher Viscosity oil than necessary Does Not provide more protection and can cause unneccessary wear on critical parts... Not talking catastrophic failure, just early wear.

As matter of fact, if the bottom end is stock or tight clearanced, Amsoil Racing Dominator, RD-20 will provide more than adequate protection..

There are over hundreds of members here using Amsoil 0W-30 and the RD-20 will provide more protection in a modded engine than the 0W-30 and also give a HP Increase..

 

Bob- you just reminded me to never use the word always


Very true, ultimately your engine builder should have something to say about oil selection. There are already too many debates about brands and I did not want this discussion to turn that way, hence my wording.

I'm also much more familiar with the Subaru system, and it seems like the 4G63 is more likely to benefit from a 0W or similar than an EJ from what I've seen so far.

 

Almost like using the word "Never"

In days gone by it use to be common practice to step right up to a 20W-50 for "more protection" ... This is due to a few things such as we were talking about engines that already had tolerances set for a 10W-40 and they were opened up even more to allow the rorating assembly spin more freely and also comes from Racing such as NASCAR or other types of endurance racing where even the best synthetics are put to the test.

Unfortunately this lives on in todays world of smaller, tighter clearanced engines.. Many of them are still running "Stock" clearances for the cranks and unless these engines are seeing Hard Track use of an hour or more at a time with no cool downs, the use of a higher viscosity oil is not necessary.

That being said.... I am strictly talking Premium Synthetics. A petroleum oil in a Turbo Charged Engine is a waste and will in all likelyhood reduce the longevity and overall performance of the engine and drivetrain.

Oils should be chosen carefully if you care about what you are using it in. Picking an oil by it's rated viscosity or strictly by a dyno test are 2 examples of how not to pick an oil. The film strength of an oil can be more important than the viscosity.

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Great info Bob. Ask the builder what to run. Hopefully more people with the same engine setup like you will post and give you some info as to what they run and how long they have been running that particular oil setup.

 

I would talk to the engine builder to get an idea of what they suggest as they will be aware of what tolerances the motor was built with and can base their opinion accordingly.

I like Brad Penn Racing Oil personally, they cut their own oil and unlike mobil or many other oil brands now their racing oil still has higher levels of zinc dialkyldithiophosphate (a.k.a. ZDDP). Refined domestically (in Pennsylvania) from their very specific crude, etc etc... you can read up on it yourself if you do some research on them. It is GREAT OIL and the price is not insane (5$ a qrt roughly)!

 

I am not so crazy on the idea of asking the builder which oil to run either. the younger builders have the old idea of "Thicker is Better".This is days long gone if you are using a Premium Synthetic as you should be. Mostof these engine are very capable of running an oil in the High 20 wgt to low 30 wgt with the proper oil.

Listen to their suggestions and think about it.

Ask them what the crank clearances are compared to stock... Then, Take into consideration how the engine is to be used... Most Evo owners will not run the engine long enough and hard enough to break a good synthetic oil down.

It is all about Film Strength today, not so much viscosity.

Anyone that tracks their car should not only be running a good oil pressure gauge but a warning light that will almost blind you when it goes on.

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Bob here is the issue i have with some of your statements, however in most cases i do agree that the use for heavy oils like 40 and 50 is completely unecessary because most of the cars running here are stock bottom end, or they have AMS , BR , Jackson Machineshop ect.. builds which are not being pushed over 500WHP anyways, therfore a 10w30 100% synthetic is their ticket.

Now with that being said there are some peple that are running crazy boost 35psi to 55psi , these turbos are getting super dupper hot they are throwing nasty fuels like C16, E85, Methanol injection ect... and they are pushing the envelope 650WHP to 1100 WHP and i dont think a 0W30 oil is going to cut it with this type of power, the engine builder knows his tolerances and i know for a fact they open then up somewhat bigger than stock why to accomodate for the extra thermal expansion.

I have customers that will only put the AMSOIL 20W50 in their stock bottom end i would like them to put 30 but they refuse, however they run crazy on the track they are always running the car hard and they run crazy boost 30-35psi and they also dont run pump gas on thei car. we have seen 2-5 horses in loss on the dyno but who cares about 2-5 ponnies when you are pushing 470WHP



and i do reccomend that any build engine the owner should listen to its builder reccomended oil, why because bottom line when it blows up and you were not using the oil reccomneded by your builder then you dont have nothing to fall back on.


Andy J
AMSOIL delaer

 

How about valvoline race oil. Thats what I'm using. That oil is like using gel.

 

Royal Purple 10w-30 & OEM Filter with crush washer works for me.

 

Valvoline VR-1 20w-50 is what we use in our built motors. My motor has about 8k miles on it now with many races revving to 9krpm boosting 40+ psi Motor was broken in with this oil as well. Every oil change is nice and clean.

I don't run an oil cooler as well.

 

Nissan2Evo, do you mind sharing your 2 cents as an engine builder why do you use a thicker oil on a build motor and why all the other big shops also use 50.

please educate us and get as technical as you like, pictures, tables whatever

 

I am use Eneos 5W40