Engine Break-In and Synthetics

[BruceM]

Yes, Cognos, the white mineral oil that I have is that same as baby oil without the vitamin e added.  It's available in light and heavy weights.  It's the oil I use for all my tools, and well as a cutting oil when drilling metals, and for my big 2 stage 7HP compressor here on grid. For grease in tools, where needed, I use Vaseline, sometimes with add powered graphite to it.

If you think white oil is not so bad as a lubricant, I guess I'll just stick with it, I still have 15 gallons left, a lifetime supply. I've not had premature death or wear of my air tools or motors using it.

I remember trying some special Mobil biodegradable oils, thinking vegetable base would be good. Ugh, the stuff they added to stabilize/anti gum that stuff was worse than motor oil by far.

[mike90045]

Jojoba oil . It's an amercian desert plant, and very close to Sperm Whale oil.   I had a transmission shop that swore by it, as an additive to auto trans fluid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jojoba

[mobile_bob]

air tools survive surprisingly well without any oil purposely added to the airstream

i use lots of airtools and have daily for the last 35 plus years, and have never had a failure due to lack of oil in
the airmotors.

most body men will beat you to death if you oil their airtools, the exhaust of oil contaminates their work, and believe me
you will get a real lecture on the use of oil in their tools.

i made that mistake only once back in my teens, and after having done so had to rinse out all my bosses air tools with laquer thinner!

i have a die grinder that has been used heavily and it is over 30 years old, and has been oiled maybe twice in the last 25 years.

if the tool siezes, add a couple drops of whatever oil is handy to loosen it up, and put it back to work.

bob g

[BruceM]

Thanks for that, Bob.  Harbor freight junk does need some oil, I think- the vanes and cylinders aren't top rate.  I have a mix- don't mind using Harbor Freight for some rarely used stuff. 

I have tried JoJoba oil many times, on many things, and found that it is utter crap.  It will gum up as bad as any vegetable oil, a real pain to then soak and clean.

[aqmxv]

There are uses for vegetable oils with machinery in applications where gumming is a feature, not a bug.  Castor bean oil (that's where Castrol's name comes from - not that there's any castor oil in their current products) forms a film on metal that has to be machined off to remove it - very useful if you need to preserve metal in contact with moisture.  Likewise, it's the best two-stroke engine lube I've ever used.  Even if you overheat and seize the engine it will usually not score the bore because of the plastic-like coating from the gummed oil.

The downside, obviously, is that it can seize the insides of equipment up if you don't use it carefully.  I tend to use it once a season or so on two-strokes at 20:1, and the rest of the time I use a modern synthetic two-stroke lube at 30:1 or 50:1.  If you run castor oil all the time it will carbon up the ring lands (especially at at 20:1).

I used to use it (or Klotz lube formulated with it) at 20:1 in racing snowmobiles.  Worked great, but you had to warm the gasoline up to room temp first, because the castor oil would just sit there in a gelatinous blob and not mix with the fuel below freezing.  If you look at history - racing oils for cars and airplanes were generally castor oil based until petrochemicals offered better lubricity and lifespan.

So it's worth considering using a vegetable oil like jojoba or castor in machinery, but you don't generally want to leave it there without a coating of something that doesn't gum on top.  Put it in for heavy-duty use, get the equipment hot once, then switch to a plain old hydrocarbon oil so that it won't gum up.

[Apogee]

You know, I love this site!!!!!

[muskeg]

  I have a Jian Dong 15 hp bought from princess auto . I converted it to propane and it is approaching 1 thousand hours as my main workhorse. It drives 2 dodge alternators for my battery bank.
I have tried many different automotive oils and found  white carbon deposits to be a problem.
Switching to walmart tech 2000 100% synthetic and had no more problems.
Last oil change was at 250 hrs and the oil was looked slightly dark. Burns a ounce 20 hours.

My diesel gensets and trucks /tractors etc used 15w40 in summer and Petro Can 0w30 in winter.
  Onetime I used 0w30 in the summer for field work... Low oil pressure but no damage was done.

Basically what I found over the years is to test a oil in your application by checking how well it pours and watching things like valve clearances.  Then extend the changes a little bit.

  For giggles take several brands of oil and put them in the freezer then try to pour...... you may be suprised....

[rcavictim]

Jojoba oil . It's an amercian desert plant, and very close to Sperm Whale oil.   I had a transmission shop that swore by it, as an additive to auto trans fluid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jojoba

I guess the guy at the transmission shop was a true Jojoba's Witness.   

[rcavictim]

  I have a Jian Dong 15 hp bought from princess auto . I converted it to propane and it is approaching 1 thousand hours as my main workhorse. It drives 2 dodge alternators for my battery bank.
<snippage> 

Muskeg,

I am generally familiar with the products at Princess Auto as it is the store that gets most of my money.  I am totally unfamiliar with a 15HP JiangDong engine ever sold by them.  Can you give more details please? Is this a diesel or gasoline engine?  What else can you tell us about it?  When was such an engine available.  Do you have a picture you can post?

[lowspeedlife]

Back in the early 80's I had a '72 pinto (yes that's the explosion model) & needed to top up the oil. this is when oil came in the paper 1 quart cans.  It was extremly cold for Washington, DC. & as i tipped the can of Pennzoil 10-w30 over the funnel, nothing happened. It was so thick It would not come out of the can, I finally had to squeeze the can to expell the oil from it. Later that month I heard that Pennzoil had some "issues" with there oil that had damaged some engines. I haven't used oil that comes in a yellow can since. I did a few years later pull the valve cover & oil pan from my grandfathers '67 chevy stepside pickup, he always used Pennzoil & refused to change even when I told him about the problems thay had, well the oil had gummed up the area under the valve cover so bad that it had clogged the oil return passages to the point that when running the oil would fill the valve cover & over flow the engine. the pan had better than an inch & a half of sludge in the bottom. Good stuff that Pennzoil.

  Scott R.

[M61hops]

In December of 1977 I bought a new Ford Fiesta and always used Penzoil in it because that was what always seemed to be on sale at oil change time.  I abused the shit out of the motor for the first five years or so because I lived at the bottom of a long steep hill on a high speed road.  I used full throttle on a stone cold motor every morning    !  At 82.000 miles the rings on #4 cylinder broke from being frozen by carbon build up and all pistons were that way.  All four cylinders were .005 egg shaped also.  I sort of consider that an oil related failure even though it was partly my fault for heating the piston tops real hot very fast.  I put in new rings and bearings and have been using Cheveron 10/30 ever since because that was what was on sale around where I haved lived since 1987.  The motor still runs good and doesn't have too much blowby but is starting to leak oil from front crankshaft seal so I don't know how much longer it will go.  The odometer/speedometer quit so long ago I can't remember but I think there's around 250,000 miles on the car.  I've been using mostly Chevron oil in all my vehicles and it seems to work fine, but it has gone from $.99 a quart to $3.29 in the last few years.  Story worth $.02?

[muskeg]

 Hey there RCA victim...

I will try to get a picture of it. The 15 hp JD engine looks like a knockoff off a Honda 13 hp.
It is gasoline and seems to run fine.  I put a propane carb on it and dicovered that it backfires through the intake. On propane you have to set the plug gap at 0.15 to stop the backfire.
Valve lash was out to lunch from new.  So far it has been a great little engine.
Propane being 0.70c/L I was considering a 6hp diesel from Princess Auto.  Ecodiesel website says he has Kissan listeroids I may consider one for congen.