Have any of you seen an oil caused engine failure

[Meat Popsicle]

I have been messing with HP engines since i was 12. Since the first days of the internet forums EVERYBODY argues about oil its additives etc.

But it seems when I post and ask for evidence of true oil caused engine failures. I get nothing.

I also have a Porsche 911 that is oil cooled and i swear nothing is more important to a 911 engine then its oil.


SO the question is does anybody here have first hand proof of oil caused failure?

[Omega5]

Very good question!
But try to re-phrase it. Has anyone here had engine failure caused by sludge?
(I know Toyotas have that problem, and I'm sure you'll find people who answered YES to that.)

I'm very skeptical about brand loyalty, ie, Castrol over Valvoline over Motomaster, if you change it regularly, and keep it clean, I bet cooking oil will do just fine. On that note, I own 4 Jetskis, and they are all 2 stroke engines, can you guys guess what I do with my dirty engine oil after i take it out of my car? (4 years on my oldest Jetski and counting, never seen 2-stroke oil) I also don't believe in changing plugs unless they fail, I do however believe in cleaning them regularly, like 2 or 3 times per season)

[Jeremy]

Not able to prove it 100% as oil failure, but engine failure due to excess wear in two cylinders allowed me to buy my 2K V70 from my friend for $2000. The engine stared using oil the dieing at stop lights. The local shop tore into it and found excess wear (ie steps on the wall from the rings). The engine only had 88K on it. He was not hard on it and had the oil changed every 3-5K at the local Penzoil quick lube. I was told once that certain oils (Penzoil and Quakerstate) are prone to coking and sludge. I have no proof of this statement but have always stuck with Castol in my other cars and never had an issue with the brown buildup or sludge.

Why this engine went south is beyond me as my '87 740 has over 325K and the walls still have the cross hatching on them.

His loss was my gain. Spent $2000 on a used engine with 25K on it and have been driving it ever since.

Jeremy

[knucklebuster]

Lemme guess. Cylinders 4 and 5? Furthest from the oil pump? Not oil failure. Oil pressure failure.

Volvo's biggest oil problem is pressure. I have a '99, and oil must pass through 7 o-rings before lubricating anything. Mine has hydraulic lifters that started making lots of noise around 115k. Replacing the oil seals in the pan solved the problem. I had low oil pressure and never saw the oil light come on.

In their wisdom, volvo switched to solid lifters (not sure when) because they thought the hydraulic ones were bad. The dealer talks about replacing lifter sets, but never about replacing these seals. Mine were shot. Every one of them either deformed, shrunk, or crumbled. So the one indicator for low pressure (the lifters) has been designed out. The pressure sensor must be close to the pump because it did not warn me.

If you have 100k on your car, do the seals.

[bwik]

I get your point, when people say "change oil at 3K..." Or what? Is the engine going to fail if you change at 6K? 8K? Probably not.

Most of that conversation is about engine wear between 300,000 and 1M miles. It does not matter. Engines are cheap, anyway. I have yet to wear out an engine myself. Usually give up around 150k, due to other maintenance problems that actually do occur. Such as suspension, climate control, other systems.

The gas engine has been perfected such that only basic oil changes are needed. Frequent intervals is for 1M mile seekers only. JMO.

But, I do believe transmission / diff fluid changes are too infrequent. Both should be every 50k in my view, no matter what the car. People concentrate on engine oil because it is easy to understand, and seems crucial, even though it usually is not.

[MoeB]

Oil related engine failures are normally not sudden catastrophic events. They're much more insidious. Any engine will run fine for a while on the wrong oil, e.g., one with a viscosity that's too low, but premature engine failure will eventually result because the lubricant film will be too weak in high-temperature, high-load situations. When pistons reach TDC and BDC in the cylinder, entrainment velocity goes to zero. With zero entrainment velocity, you get no elasto-hydrodynamic contribution to the oil film thickness. The only protection you are left with is what you can get statically from the oil viscosity, and if that's too low, excess wear occurs.

If you want to see an oil related engine failure in a relatively short period of time, fill your Volvo engine with service category SA 10 weight nondetergent oil. With a high sustained speed through a hot environment, you might even get to see a catastrophic failure.

[Meat Popsicle]

After reading thread after thread of engine oil recs. I can see that it really doesn matter which brand you use or even syn vs dino. just make sure it is rated properly and the right vicosity.

I have never seen an oil related engine failure. EVER. Its not voodoo. My mom has 389k on her 87 240dl. she has been using regular dino oil for it entire life. never one brand and all different brands. She drive and changes oil thats it.


Anyway regardless of the board i belong to Porsche/SRT8/Ferrari etc. it always the same.

[MoeB]

After reading thread after thread of engine oil recs. I can see that it really doesn matter which brand you use or even syn vs dino. just make sure it is rated properly and the right vicosity.

Helps to change it regularly, too.

[Omega5]

No doubt! Engine failure due to oil is almost never immediate. So it's difficult to relate the two. However, if you rebuild an engine yourself, there are lots of tell tale signs of poor lubrication. After all, it is lack of lubrication that causes failure. Now, interpreting this lack of lubrication correctly is not easy. Once finding the problem area the question remains, why was it not lubricated, and form there the plot thickens and most of the rest is pure speculation. You could say, well maybe it was wrong viscosity, maybe the oil broke down and lost it's properties (age or wear), maybe oil was ok, but the oil delivery was at fault.

Once you do narrow it down to the most likely scenario (it helps to own the car, that way you can rule out certain things), you can go from there and ask WHY did this happen, and you may conclude that it was actually an oil related failure. Poor quality oil, lead to blocked oil passageways and say the cam shaft was starved of oil and this lead to premature and excessive wear.

Point is, there are so many guesses and assumptions that you have to make along the way, no one can truly pin point it to oil related failure. There is always an uncertainty. Question is, would this have happened had you used different oil? Who knows, maybe.

[Meat Popsicle]

I have seen some engine bearings that have had to high of pressure and the bearing face was effectively sand blasted with oil

[Omega5]

well, ok that is different, there is all kinds of failure that can be attributed to fluid dynamics. Cavitation is one of them, and the funny cart is that cavitation is affected by viscosity. So in a system where the fluid is of certain viscosity and weight, there is no cavitation, but by changing the fluid or it's viscosity cavitation can take place. What happened to those bearings is not cavitation, but i'm using it as an example where you can get mechanical damage due to fluid dynamics errors, and in turn you can say "yes, because i used a thinner oil i got cavitation and my engine went. True engine failure due to incorrect oil." Will you ever witness something like that? Hell no, the oil pump is not THAT effective!