Oil discussion

Mike

If you can make it we have the January meeting of Pantera Club of Northern California this coming Wednesday the 29th at Cocos Restaurant 1209 Oakmead Parkway, Sunnyvale, CA. Meeting starts at 8:00 PM but most folks come early and have dinner before the meeting. We would like to meet you and most of us are very familiar with your car.
Forest

I will do everything I can to make that meeting!

I'm looking forward to meeting everyone.

My neighbor Chuck had a meeting/gathering at his house in Santa Rosa, and i came over and I think may have met many of you already, but that was years ago, and I was still just a "Pantera fan" not an owner.

I'll try to make that meeting. Thanks for the heads-up.

Hey Mike,

There's also a PCNC Superbowl Party at Bob Benson's shop Campbell on Superbowl Sunday. Another great opportunity to put a few miles on your car, meet more Pantera owners, and see everyone else's cars.

BTW - Were you at the Ironstone Concours? Did I take you for a ride in my Pantera, or are you another Mike in Santa Rosa who was looking for a Pantera? Congrats on your purchase of Roger's car. It's sure to bring you years of fun!

The only other Pantera I've ridden in was Chuck's, my neighbor. His car has the roll cage that has the diagonal bar that goes behind the passenger seat, so my ride was short, and seriously uncomfortable, my face squished up against the windscreen, knived half in/half out of a racing seat, but it was a very cool ride, so I know I've not driven in your car.

Went for my 4th ride today, filled the tank for the first time, had another great day of new Pantera ownership. Thumbs up everywhere I go!

quote:

Originally posted by garth66:
Hey Mike,

There's also a PCNC Superbowl Party at Bob Benson's shop Campbell on Superbowl Sunday. Another great opportunity to put a few miles on your car, meet more Pantera owners, and see everyone else's cars.

BTW - Were you at the Ironstone Concours? Did I take you for a ride in my Pantera, or are you another Mike in Santa Rosa who was looking for a Pantera? Congrats on your purchase of Roger's car. It's sure to bring you years of fun!

Lets car pool to this (THURSDAY'S!) PCNC meeting from Sonoma and spend 5-6 hours discussing/seeing/sharing/enjoying other Panteras (and Mangustas!) and their owners, and asking their prefered oil types/viscosities/pressures.

http://www.panteraclubnorcal.org/

Sounds great!

I sent you a PM with my number, please call me.

What time does the meeting happen?

Where is it again (well, I'll just follow you there!lol)

I'm really looking forward to meeting other Pantera owners. Years ago, when my neighbor Chuch had a meeting/drive start from his house, I got to briefly meet many of you, and the people i met struck me as a group I really wanted to be a part of, so I'm really looking forward to this meeting!

Hi Mike,
I recently "freshened" my motor and once the rings seated I started running Amsoil. It drains out looking like it hasn't been used. Time will tell, but thus far I'm pleased. I think it's worth mentioning that while motor oil is important, the lubrication in the ZF is also of great importance. Our transaxles are a spendy part - use a quality product and change it regularly. And did I mention, drive the wheels off that new toy!

I talked with someone (I forget the name of the outfit, but it was a for-panteras comapny. He said he'd rebuilt probably 300 ZF boxes, and recomended Penzoil 80-90 part #4963 so that's what I plan to get for the gearbox.

For the engine, this particular gentleman recommended Joe Gibbs non-synthetic oil, saying many of the top engine builders he knew ran and recommended this oil.

I know when I ran my Porsche (where oil and brands are a BIG deal) the 2 brands thrown around mostly were "Brad Penn" (renamed Kendall-the green stuff) or "Swepco" which is what I ran.

I spent many hours researching oils. Kendall, or now "Brad Penn" oil is supposed to come from this one very special oil well that pumps out THE sweetest oil ever, which I found interesting.

Swepco oil, which is what the previous owner of my Porsche recommended, is what I ran, and I can definitely say Swepco is REALLY good! It's not synthetic, but both Brad Penn and Swepco both contain higher/est levels of zinc and ZDDP.

Today's overhead cam engines do not need the same addatives because they run at lower pressures and stresses than our older, flat tappet, "old style" engines that had really high spring pressures, and flat tappets, and the zinc and ZDDP caused havoc with the catalytic converters, so, I don't know, maybe 15 years ago (wild guess) they made a reformulation across the board for all motor oils. I don't know the whole story, but I DO know that if you run something like Castrol GTX in your old Porsche flat-6, you'll flatten your cams out within 10-20 thousand miles, and so oils with more of the "old style formulations" were what one needed to run in their older porsches.

Now on American angines, I've seen it all. I've seen engines that never had their oil changed EVER, and run for 100k miles, I've seen engines so sludged up I was surprised they even ran, and then I've seen engines that were sparkling clean and looked better than the day they were built with high miles, so I really don't know.

When I ran motocycles, I know switching to synthetic ALWAYS caused leaks to appear from nowhere, the stuff just likes to seep and leak if it can.

On my new (to me) hotrod engine, I'm probably going to go with that Joe Gibbs oil or Brad Penn or Swepco, one of those three, not sure yet.

All these oils are not cheap, my car has a 10 quart oil pan, fun stuff.

have you read sticky #4

Hi George,

I did rear sticky #4 with great interest.

As this car and engine are new to me, I have no way of knowing whether any of the mods like the lifter bore bushings, or external lines were installed on my engine.

I do know my engine is roller cammed, with Jesel (?) rockers, and is running perfectly and has relatively low miles on it. Pressures seem great so I'm not worried about anything.

The car, being new to me, I want to treat it with the best fluids I can find, and so I thought I'd open this discussion about oil, to hopefully get some opinions and/or info that might be of help to me.

After researching, and talking with a few people (who were nice enough to give me a few minutes of their time), I think I've come up with the weights and brands of oils that I plan to replace the present fluids with.

Thanks again to everyone who posted, this forum is great, and I'm enjoying being a part of my new "pantera family".

As far as what oil to use, it depends on what clearances the engine was built to use. Older engines are often built with larger bearing clearances so thin oils won't give the support the bearings need. 20W50 sounds correct as Roger's engine builder was an old-time dirt-track sprint car builder. Its been 14 yrs so I may be mistaken, but I don't think your motor had lifter bushings for the solid roller cam. It does have an aluminum flywheel which lets it rev up like a motorcycle. I think the cam is a reduced-base-circle type, as the 1st cam they tried lifted the tappets high enough so the oil bands cut into the lifter bodies were exposed, causing 16 massive oil leaks every turn of the crank. Roger's builder was on the phone to Comp Cams seconds later about that screw-up! I don't believe he used Comp for any future builds. The Jesel shaft-mount roller rockers were needed as your SVO C-3 heads were configured for them; stud-mount rockers wouldn't fit those heads.

I decided to stay with the same weight that was already being used, and from one of my many calls, I was recommended "Joe Gibbs Hot Rod" oil with high zinc and zddp levels. I chose to not switch to synthetic, and went with the advice of an engine builder, not sure but possibly the person who actually built the engine, I can't remember.