The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop Oil for Old Trucks

To All,

I was very impressed after discovering this story!
http://www.imakenews.com/rotella/e_article000182808.cfm

Brendan....you've got it right on the money!!

i used to run rotella t in my sportsbike never thought about it for the truck, lately i've been using castrol gtx 20-50 what do you guys use?

From burning 2 gallons of oil to not burning anything sounds a little too good to be true. They probably replaced a valve cover gasket or oil pan gasket along the way. Pretty hard for me to bite on that one being completely true.

Good story , but it's still an advert by Rotella.com

Well I can tell you a story I know is true because I was the one doing the driving & service but on a smaller scale. The wife & I owned a mid 80's Oldsmobile Cutless Ciera w/a V6 Diesel(a true diesel not a gas converted mtr). I had bought it from my parents they told me it would use a quart per tank of fuel & on an average the car would get about 35mpg using any diesel fuel so I figured I could live w/using a qt of oil w/that mileage.
On day I was talking to a buddy who was an over the road truck driver & told him how much oil my car was using. He asked me what type of oil & fuel I was using & I told him whatever oil is used for diesels & fuel from where ever I could find it. Well he told to at least use Rotella Oil & try to use Shell Diesel Fuel because of how clean it was & that they always put the winter additives in it.
Using just the Rotella Oil my oil consummation went from one qt every tank of fuel to one quart every 3-4,000 miles when I would change the oil. Plus when I ran Shell Fuel & Oil my MGP went from around 35mpg to about 45mpg and in the winter I never had to plug the car in even when it got below zero here in Illinois.

And that folks are the TRUE FACTS of my use of Rotella Oil....Joe

I use AMSOIL: 10w-40, 20w-50, and SAE-60, or MOBILE 1 10W-40, and 15w-50 !

AMX, GMC,T/A, and MACK get the SAE-60. . .
the Dodge and Chevy get AMSOIL 10w-40 in winter and 20w-50 in summer. . .

The Ford get's the mobile 1 10w-40 in winter 15w-50 in summer. .

Mike

Joe,

Good to hear a positive story and experience about Rotella oil from an actual user!! Very interesting and encouraging.

Anyone else had true experience with Shell's Rotella oil? I know Brendan just started using it and has also seen positive results...anyone else? I know the story I linked you all to was a plug for the oil, but aren't there just really good products out there that work extremely well?? This being one? I'd sure wave my flag if I had a product selling that really worked superior against the competition!!

Well, I'm filing this one with the 200mpg carburetor and pill the ya put in the gas tank, then fill it with the garden hose myths. Sounds like one of Paul Harvey's commercials for Casite Motor Honey.
No way am I going to believe that changing to different motor oil is going to move you from a quart of oil per tank of fuel to no oil loss.
And I've been using Rotella-T in the old gal for the last 1500 miles. That's all I got to put on her this, my first summer. Oh, and by the way I'm still loosing 1qt every 100 miles or so.
No blue smoke at all or puffs at start up. But she does need Depends.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

I should probably mention that my truck's 216 was rebuilt about 200-300 miles before it was parked in the early 80s.

It doesn't (and hasn't since I've had her) used any oil. I expect that to change after it loosens up a bit.

The Reason I went with Rotella-T was that I could find it with ZDDP at the time, and I went with a slightly thicker grade to see if I could prevent the drippy plug spots on my floor... That, and I figured that at 140° - 180°F, the oil would flow somewhere in the neighborhood of a SAE 20 or 30 straight weight.

The added bonus is that the tappets are a lot quieter.

Aside from that... Time will tell. [shrugs]

That's worse than any of the old air-cooled VWs that I drove in the South in the 60s. Watch out for the EPA regarding your oil spills.

I sure hope you're talking about the link in the 1st post??
&&& If you are still loosing that amount of oil & there is no blue smoke at all or puffs at start ups then you need to put some gaskets on that mtr.

But if your not talking about the link in the 1st post I guess you're calling me I'm a lier??????
THANKS...............
I know what I experienced, I know what I did to try to fix the problem & it worked. Believe it if you want or not.
BUT that sir is not only the FACTS but the TRUTH & I have NO reason to lie about it...Joe

All the talk about oils and what you can and can't do is not a big comfort. I have read and heard from numerous sources to use 30wt, non- detergent oil in my c10 235. I was told that the rings would not seat properly using detergent oil but I never understood why that would be true. I dumped the 10w30 after a hundred or so miles of trailing blue smoke, but it still smoked for a while with 30wt non detergent .. It did eventually quit smoking.
I have also read that the detergent multiweight oils do not have zink additive which will cause camshaft lobe failure in older engines.I have noticed a couple of articals about cam failure in racing engines that do not use oils with a zink additive. Chevrolet engines back in the 50's and sixties experienced came lobe failure but I never heard then of it being attributed to the absence of zink in the oil. To my knowledge, Ford engines of the same generation never experienced the cam failure. I remember hearing "Chevies have soft cams".
Because of posts in this chain praising Shell Rotella, I went to Walmart and read the specs. They do not say it has either zink or ZDDP. They not even say it is for use in gasoline engines; they only specifically mention being for diesel engines and "other heavy machinery". Then I read the specs for the 30wt non-detergent oil I had bought to put in my truck. It specificaly says DO NOT use in automobiles newer than 1930 or possible engine damage may result. Now there is another comfort.
I think I'm goimg to switch back to Valvoline 10w-30 which I have mostly used for years.
The owners manuals for a lot of 4 cycle lawn mower engines specify non-detergent oils. I have seen electric motor driven air compressors and other types of pumps using crankase oil lubrication specifying non-dtergent oils. I have never head a reason for this, I suppose there is one somewhere.
meansam