well it is time i went to a synthetic oil. the car has been broke in for about 5 months and has 500 mile on it. It is a 455 street motor with all the fixings. I was running vavoline 10 30. the main clearances are .0025 so it hold little oil pressure at idle when hot about 18. as soon as you tap the gas it shoots to 40. and at 5500 its about 65 so no problems there. i was wanting to go to a synthetic oil. what weight do u reccomend and what brand. there are alot out there and i was thinking vavoline. is it ok also when i switch over will the car have excess valve train noise or will it act like conventional oil. thanks bryan
OIL Bryan, since your oil pressure is good at a hot idle and gets up to 65 lbs. you could run a 10w30 synthetic. That's what i run in my GS. As for brand, i'll use either Red Line or Mobil 1. Just make sure your engine is broken in before you switch. Have to make sure the rings are seated. You shouldn't have any noise in valvetrain if you don't have any now. You will notice that the synthetic oil will maintain oil pressure after many miles unlike the conventional oil. (my experience). hope this helps. Randy
randy thanks alot for the reply, would it hurt to run vavoline or amsoil? also what is the best way to make sure the rings are seated. it has 500 miles on it and a good half of them are pretty hard miles. as fas as valvetrain noise there is some from the rockers when the engine is hot, but i think that is from oil breakdown and low preassure at idle.
oil Hey Bryan, i would use either valvoline or Amsoil. I believe either will be fine. as far as the rocker noise, are you running adjustable pushrods or roller rockers? When this engine was built, were the heads or block decked? If so, your lifter preload could be off. Is the noise on the drivers side or on both sides? For engine break-in, i pretty much had 500 miles with 25-30 1/4 mile passes on the engine before i went to synthetic. There many differing opinions on this as well. I broke my engine in driving to the track (about 80 -100 miles) then raced her all day without a hitch. The engine has been together 4 years & has many street miles & about 150 passes on it. Keep us posted. Randy
no the noise is from both sides, but the driver side seems a tad louder. i check the driverside periodcally for oil and it has just as much on the drivers side as the passenger side. i have roller rockers and i think they are just noisey. well i might wait with synthetic until next year, that will give it plenty of break in time thanks for the help:bglasses:
