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What's the Best Oil for a Ram Cummins Diesel Engine and Camshaft Break-in?


Megatron

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First off I apologize if my writing and posting skills are a bit off the wall and hard to follow, it's just how I am. Anyways, I am an owner of an 06 Ram 3500 Mega Cab with the super cool 5.9 Cummins. I am a big believer in maintenance and upkeep on all of my vehicles. Now I have only been a diesel owner for about 2 years now, and I have learned a lot. I have a lot more to learn and it seems as if I learn something new every day.

 

Over the past few weeks I have been doing some heavy upgrades to my engine like a new cam, lifters, valve springs, upgraded head studs, rod bolts etc. During this process I have all but completely torn my engine down within the frame rails of my truck. My truck only had 80k miles on it, so replacing these parts was not because the old ones were bad, I'm just chasing the idea that diesels are the new hot rods on the block lol.

 

Like I said earlier, I believe in following all the maintenance recommendations of the manufacturer. They spent years testing and designing their parts and I have faith they know what is best for their components. That being said, since I bought this truck 2 years ago at 60k miles I have always done oil and filter changes at 5k miles, air filter cleaning at 3k miles (replacement if needed), coolant change per the factory time frame etc. I use Rotella oils in my truck after years of good experience in my fleet vehicles. I also rotate my cold weather weight ratings as needed for winter use.

 

Upon disassembly and inspection of my engine from the inside with the old parts removed, I must say I am very impressed with what I found. The old lifters and cam looked flawless with no wear line or anything, almost mirror like reflection on the old lifters. As for the block itself, no sludge build up anywhere, and even the PCV filter was remarkably clean. Face it, diesel oil is always nasty and will stain your skin, but that's from the fuel we burn. I even stuck a camera through the injector hole and the cylinders look pretty good as well.

 

Now for the truth. I do one of the worst things you can possible do to a diesel. I know that may come as a surprise to some but it's the truth lol. I live approximately 4 miles from my office and for most weeks that's all the longer I may drive my truck. 5-10 minutes this way and 5-10 minutes that way, once a day each way. To me that's hard on any engine. Not letting them get up to operating temperature, and then not letting them operate at that temp long enough to remove any moisture from the air coming in. Some days my truck may never warm up enough to even cycle the thermostat in the coolant. Rest assured when it is cold out (below 30) I will let it warm up before driving, kills the mpg but I think its better for the engine.

 

Now since I am aware of this I do try to take my truck for some extended trips every other weekend to get everything flowing and plenty of heat time to get any unwanted moisture out of the block. I also use a block heater when the temps fall below 30 degrees outside. To date I have never had any signs of moisture in my oil or any adverse effects on performance.

 

Well as of today (12/11/2014 in case you read this 3 years from now), I am in the process of starting the engine back up with all the new parts installed (more than listed above). After doing some research on the cam break in procedure I have come across a vast amount of oil questions in the diesel community. What oil is best for my truck??

 

Apparently, for some time now, the oils we get at the parts store aren't what they used to be. With the addition of emissions systems on vehicles since the 80's, oils have been scrutinized for there chemical make up if you will. Now I am no chemist, nor oil expert, but after some very basic research I realized that today's oils lack some of the very important things a Cummins diesel engine needs.

 

One of the thing that sets or engine apart from others is the simple design of the cam and lifters. The Cummins engine (mine anyways) is equipped with a flat tappet cam with a solid lifter. We also lack the traditional cam bearings. We do have one cam bearing but it is in the front of the block, but all the other journals are just precision machined holes in the block with out any type of bearing.  

 

Now while this seems crazy, I get it. These engines aren't supposed to be turning over 3k rpms and if you take in the gear reduction from the crank to the cam, that number is cut in half. So with such low rpm numbers I can see where this design is fine.

 

However, while this design is fine for the engine function, I personally believe with the flat tapped cam design requires more from the oils used in the engine. Am I crazy?? Maybe, but I have never been tested to confirm lol.

 

Almost all of today's modern engines have either roller lifters, hydraulic lifters, or hydraulic roller lifters or over head cam motors with various lifter/rocker designs. Granted these engines turn more rpms so these parts make sense, but the new oils are designed around this roller design if you will and not sliding metal to metal. Same with the cam bearings. Today's cars have very specific cam bearing designs and material make up suited to this. 

 

Now like I started to say earlier, the next thing happening to oils is emissions restraints. With out showing you 10 pages of science, basically the stuff in oils that help to protect our flat tapped engine design is apparently not good for the environment and actually causes harm to the modern emissions system on vehicles. The chemistry and additives that protect our parts also does harm to the emissions system. I think it eats at the catalytic components making them fail at doing their job so on and so forth. So, like most government controlled things, instead of fixing the catalytic converter and emission parts, let's just remove that stuff from the oil. Sorry if your engine doesn't last as long, that's between you and the manufacturer...Well Cummins claims 600k miles on the life of that engine..that's a long ways to go without the right oil...Just saying..

 

In my research I have stumbled upon many topics, forums and what some may call snake oils. Companies like Rev-X, ZDDP and Amsoil all claim to have the magical ingredients to fight the man while still protecting my engine. Down side is some of these treatments can add an extra 45$ on top of what was already a 100$ DIY oil change with a filter (assuming full synthetic was your choice). 

 

I'm all about protecting my investment, generally no matter the cost. However, after all but disassembling my engine, I didn't see anything that says my current treatment was not working. Then again I didn't have my parts looked at under a microscope, and I didn't pull the main caps. I believe they are fine but what should I expect in another 200K miles at my engines half life??

 

This leads me to here. I have come to evoke the knowledge of Moses...haha.  What's with oil these days man??

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Megatron, I always enjoy your topic posts and replies, many members and guests benefit from your valuable and thoughtful questions!  This question begs attention...

 

First off, let's address engine loads for a moment and the role of motor oil.  Oil maintains a lubricating film and barrier to parts friction, in particular metal-on-metal parts like flat tappet lifters against the lobes of a camshaft.  To put this into perspective, the load on a moving engine part is measured in pounds-per-square inch of actual contact between the parts.  It just so happens that the base of a new flat tappet lifter (solid or hydraulic) is convex, not flat.  This means that the contact surface between the lifter base and camshaft lobe is far less than the lobe's width.  Actually, the contact point is relatively small.

 

The lifter has a big job to do, raising the pushrod and rocker arm to compress the valve spring(s) under great force.  Coupled with the relatively small and convex contact point between the flat tappet lifter base and the camshaft lobe, the lifter base's pounds per square inch (psi) load is extreme when the valve spring is compressed.  How extreme? According to a Sealed Power reference that I've quoted since the 1980s, the psi load at the contact point between the lifter's convex base and the camshaft lobe is equal to the "weight of a locomotive".  

 

Sealed Power tossed out the figure 233,000 pounds per square inch of force.  Today online, you will find consistent references from 140,000-240,000 psi.  For curious motorheads, this figure would be governed by the valve lift (height) and the valve spring tension when the spring(s) compress at full valve lift.  The rocker ratio also fits into this relationship and load calculation.

 

So, given this extreme load, which Sealed Power indicated flatly as the highest singular load within an engine, imagine the demand on engine oil.  We all know what metal-on-metal will do, and the oil has to keep the lifters from destroying the camshaft lobes.  It's easy to understand how a GM epidemic of flat tappet camshaft failures on small-block V-8s in the 1970s and early '80s led to the added expense of using roller lifters in these "emission" small-block engines by 1986.  Roller lifters became cost effective in the long run...They also reduce friction and valvetrain stresses.

 

To protect this metal-to-metal contact, engine oil must provide a strong film and act as an anti-friction agent.  For those unfamiliar with engine plain bearings like rod and main inserts, these parts do not ride on the crankshaftthey ride on a pressure-supplied oil film between the bearings and crankshaft journals.  It's not the oil pressure that keeps these parts separated, either.  Pressurized oil simply provides a continuous supply of oil that keeps the bearing's clearance space filled with oil. 

 

It's the oil itself that keeps these parts separated.  In the case of a lifter, the oil that splashes or sprays onto the lobe and lifter base simply coats these parts.  The oil's film strength and sheer resistance keep these metal parts separated to prevent the pieces from tearing each other apart.

 

Historically, the best additive for protection has been zinc.  To put zinc's importance into perspective, when I wrote the Harley-Davidson Evolution V-Twin Owner's Bible (Bentley Publishers), my penchant for the virtues of Mobil 1 and other synthetic oils hit the wall.  In talking with H-D tech experts and asking whether my Mobil 1 mantra would work in this book, as it did in the Jeep and light truck books, they flatly said, "No!" 

 

Why?  Because the recommended oil for these air-cooled, arguably Stone Age derivative engines had to have one particular ingredient:  zinc.  Harley-Davidson's own proprietary label engine oil had more zinc at the time (1997 timeframe) than any other oil available.  This oil was "legal" and regulated to a lesser degree because of the lower volume sales of motorcycles.  Though zinc was on the EPA radar screen then, total elimination of zinc from all motor oils only came recently.

 

So, this takes us to your current dilemma.  To be blunt, zinc additive or your camshaft manufacturer's recommended additive package must be added to the crankcase of any engine that is breaking-in a flat tappet camshaft...Some say that you should continue to run a zinc additive or zinc content motor oil even after break-in. 

 

For those unfamiliar with break-in, the most crucial break-in consideration in an engine is the camshaft lobes to its lifters, rocker arms or followers.  It takes real negligence to keep piston rings from seating, something like pressing the engine repeatedly to redline with few miles on the odometer.  (This causes cylinder walls and piston rings to glaze before the rings can seat.)  As you might guess by now, it takes only one good engine dynamometer run to ruin a flat tappet camshaft and set of lifters if not properly broken-in—which includes the use of proper oil additives.

 

There have been several breakthroughs in oil development in recent years.  While I once swore by the virtues of more costly synthetic oils, I now find myself at Costco buying cases of Chevron Supreme motor oil with Iso-Syn formulation.  Our Jeep 4.0L inline six, which happens to have a flat tappet hydraulic camshaft as OEM equipment, thrives on this oil. 

 

Why?  Because the key difference between a synthetic oil and a petroleum oil used to be the high volatility molecules found in traditional petroleum based oil.  Iso-Syn formulation is a petroleum oil with lower volatility molecules throughout, and this means it behaves like a synthetic oil.  Certainly good enough for a 150,000 mile gasoline engine in a vehicle we purchased used at 94,000 miles with a history of running who knows what oil.  The additive packages in Iso-Syn Chevron products are ample.  This engine gets adequate protection at 1/3 the cost of a quality synthetic oil.

 

This same Iso-Syn formulation oil is available in the LE ("Low Emissions") Delo 400.  I began my relationship with diesels and Delo 400 in the mid-'seventies as a heavy equipment operator, working out of Local 3, Operating Engineers.  On a road job, the I-80 bypass of Winnemucca, Nevada that moved 1.6M yards of earth fill and realigned a section of the Humboldt River, S.J. Groves from Minneapolis had the contract.  They brought a wide range of Caterpillar equipment to the job. 

 

I worked a combined swing-graveyard (10-hour) shift from September until the job shut down in mid-December.  (An 8 below zero front with a 30 mph wind froze the wetted fill before compaction.)  Over those months, I saw boxcar loads of Chevron lubricants and anti-freeze pulled onto the Winnemucca siding.  Prominent in this extreme weather (same cold as the Alaska pipeline job without the benefit of closed cabs or reverse fans on the engines) was the exclusive use of Delo motor oil.

 

Your penchant for Shell's Rotella has a basis, too.  This is a great oil, just ask any over-the-road trucker.  Prior to the recent, draconian measure to eliminate zinc from engine oils, each of these two diesel oils were all you needed to know.  Now, especially with a fresh camshaft and lifters, you need to get a zinc additive for breaking in that flat tappet camshaft and lifters! 

 

Note: Roller lifters would eliminate much of this concern, and presumably the EPA must presume that most current engines have roller lifters or equivalent.  A roller lifter or roller camshaft follower, unlike a flat tappet with its necessary convex base, will distribute the load across the lifter and reduce friction with the roller bearing.

 

When I installed the new Stage 1 Hot Cams camshaft in the Honda XR650R motorcycle engine, despite the wide rocker arm contact surface at the camshaft (more like a roller's width), I raced off to find a suitable "break-in" additive for the camshaft.  I added Lucas Break-in Engine Oil Additive with Zinc-Plus™.  This additive remains in an automotive engine for 1,000 miles—more like 250-500 miles in an enduro motorcycle engine.  If you're big on draining oil shortly after rebuilding an engine, you would need to reuse this additive until the 1,000 miles accrues.  I like to change the oil filter right after the initial engine warm-up following a rebuild.  This requires top-off of the oil.  Add a proportionate amount of zinc oil additive.

 

Moral of the story: Do not run that fresh camshaft and lifters without a zinc additive during break-in!  After that, Rotella would work just fine, in fact it is rumored that Rotella has a better additive package than most diesel oils. 

 

Chevron Delo 400 and Shell Rotella are good products.  Texaco Ursa had a large following, though I'm not sure if Ursa is still readily available.  Mobil Delvac is another quality brand.  Notice that I'm not suggesting synthetic oils, though many still swear by them.  Before the first oil change on our Dodge Ram 3500, the Cummins 5.9L engine had established its permanent oil color: black.  Synthetic oil in a diesel is a questionable investment.

 

As for viscosity and climates, the latest crop of "winter" oils from each of these major commercial oil producers has my attention.  I've been running 15W-40 Delo 400 year round, and the engine uses negligible if any oil.  (The most that's ever been consumed was 1/2-quart in a 5,000 mile change cycle that included towing an 8,000# trailer up I-8's long 6% grades from San Diego to Anza-Borrego and back.)  The engine does not leak, a major tribute to late seals at the crankshaft and timing cover.  Oil pressure has always been respectable and remains the same today as when the Ram 3500 left the dealership lot over 140K miles ago.  

 

I have recently considered changing to 5W-40 Delo 400 or equivalent diesel recommended oil for winter protection, running it year round.  That would eliminate cranking stresses on start-up when the truck parks away from its block heater for lengths of time in the winter.  Since this is a synthetic base formulation, I may have to eat my words and plunge into the synthetic world of commercial diesel oils.  Cha-ching!  Here's the link to Delo oil products.  Note that Texaco's "Ursa" label is in the listed oil offerings:

 

http://www.deloperformance.com/products/engine-oils.aspx

 

As for your short drives with a diesel, you said it, this is torture.  My office is around two miles from the I-80 onramps.  In the winter, when below 45 degrees F, if I'm headed to Reno on a cold day, I can be three miles down the interstate before the engine reaches full operating temperature...and that's with the block heater plugged in the night before!  I rely on the additional 27 miles of interstate cruise to disperse the cold start/warm-up diesel fuel particulates in the crankcase. 

 

Note: We get plenty of sub-freezing weather in the winter, and I always use the factory block heater before a planned trip, allowing 12 hours or so of coolant warming before start-up.  I installed a block heater on the 4.0L Jeep Cherokee gasoline engine and use that heater every night, as this is our daily driver.  A block heater is a must for any diesel vehicle parked outside.  45 degrees F is my magic temperature for plugging-in the block heater before a run.  With a switch to 5W-40 oil, I might change the block heater plug-in to freezing temperatures—or maybe keep with the 45 degrees F practice.  The heater works nicely with the block warmed first!

 

On another note, I also use a battery maintenance device nightly in the winter.  The Battery Tender or a CTEK charger work fine for this purpose.  The CTEK has many additional features.  The Battery Tender has kept the OEM Mopar batteries in good condition since we purchased the Ram 3500 new, and that was 10 years ago!  I attribute this to the battery maintenance device, which stays on when the truck parks in the winter or in the summer if the vehicle will set for some time.

 

Do the zinc oil additive during the current camshaft and lifter break-in.  After that, your choice of engine oil is up for grabs.  My preference as an equipment operator "hand" is still the mainstay commercial/fleet diesel oils that carry the off-highway construction equipment and 18-wheeler truck engines over their extreme lifespans.

 

Trust this helps...

 

Moses

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Mind blown... haha. As usual you covered what I needed to know. I was advised by Hamilton (the cam manufacturer) to run the zinc additives for sure during break in but after the first oil change it was optional. For daily driving they didn't think it was totally necessary but for sled pulling or racing applications it was a good idea.  

 

 I tried the Rotella T6 full synthetic last year during the winter months. It did fine. Its notably thinner and you can tell it by how the engine runs and the noises it makes. Nothing harmful just subtle changes to the ear and the quickness of the rpms. Seems a bit thin to me for summer time so its out when the weather gets above 50. I guess at temp, even in the winter, its the same as the summer. It does make cold weather starting easier and no real drag on the starting system at 0 degrees. That's good lol.

 

  So what's with the zinc? I know its used in the galvanizing process for the towers I stack (like 95%+ zinc) and I know its used as sacrificial anodes on ships at sea, but how does it play into oil as an additive for wear?? Assuming its the same zinc and not a different element I have confused it with.   

 

 Thanks again for the awesome insight and reply.

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Megatron...The official "word" is at the Valvoline Q&A page: http://www.valvoline.com/faqs/motor-oil/racing-oil/.  Take a peek, you'll gather that zinc-phosphorus is a powerful anti-friction and sheer resistant compound.  Zinc is zinc, though the oil additive version is chemically compatible with the rest of the oil additive package.  There is a note about compatibility in Valvoline's comments, it is important to make sure the oil and additives will not react adversely.  That's why I turned to Lucas' break-in additive with Zinc Plus and did not get creative.  No sense becoming an oil engineer or modern day alchemist.  I have enough balls to juggle!

 

As for how long to leave this zinc additive in place, Lucas says 1000 miles, and I'm sure that's for a reason.  Hamilton's comments sound logical.  The main issue is break-in of the camshaft lobes to the lifter bases.  This sets up an interface pattern that will last for the engine's lifespan.  Builders know that you never mix the lifters when disassembling an engine and reusing the camshaft and original lifters!

 

I'm curious about your camshaft change and grind, your motives and objectives here, and why you went to these lengths.  What's the driving environment?  Sounds like a new topic post brewing here!

 

Moses

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  • 5 weeks later...

To follow up on the break in:

 

  I went with the Lucas oil Zinc additive. It was available locally. So far so good. I was able to prime the engine using the starter with the main injector harness unhooked. Plus I had applied plenty of high pressure (royal purple) assembly lubricant to everything during the build. Truck started and ran great. Did the required break in procedure and then re checked the valve lash. Everything checked out and the gains in power are crazy... This has led to a couple other topics I would like to get started in a few days.

 

  As always thanks for the knowledge and advice on this build. So far I'm all grins and my truck seems to be loving it..

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This sounds really exciting...Looking forward to your details on the combined equipment that makes this all work.  Also curious where you have the power gains and how this works with your gearing and tires...and the bulletproof, built 48RE automatic transmission!

 

Watching for your topics...

 

Moses

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