Speedfreaks101

I have had the book "CHEVROLET POWER :The Official Factory Performance Guide" for ten years but have only looked for specific information. Then today I looked upon page 180 and here is a quote about racing oils

"The GM Motorsports Technology Group recommends 30 to 50 weight ashless racing oil or a 20W-50 multi-viscosity oil with ashless detergent additives. If you are uncertain whether a particular brand of oil is ashless, check with the oil manufacturer. Avoid all oils that contain even a small percentage of barium or calcium. These materials promote destructive pre-ignition and can cause burned pistons when they are present in carbon deposits in the cylinder."



First off is the ashless something that is common knowledge (what do you know of it)?

Second is the barium and calcium information new to you?


Later,
Bart

Patman

You will be extremely hard pressed to find a motor oil without calcium in it, unless it's a specific race only oil. But even then it's rare to find, most race oils do contain calcium too. I don't know of too many oils with barium in them, in fact none of the ones I've used so far have shown barium on my oil analysis reports.

As far as ashless oils, that is another thing that you'll probably only find if you go with a pure race oil, as the street oils do contain sulfated ash in them, usually around 1%. It's pretty harmless though.

Speedfreaks101

Forgive my ignorance but is there any issues with running a pure racing oil in a weekend driver (250 miles per weekend)?

Also what about the ash presents a problem?

And is the calcium content in the typical oils (Mobil 1, Castrol Syntec Royal Purple) large enough to cause any issues that GM has warned of?

Thanks,
Bart

Patman

To truly know if you're going to have a problem running a pure race oil, the best thing to do is get the oil analyzed after you've run it a while. Otherwise I'd purely be speculating. If you run something like Royal Purple Racing 41 you'd be safe for sure, as I've seen results on this oil on people who drive their cars daily and it can handle 5000 mile intervals or higher without a problem.

I think the biggest problem with high ash content would be that it could harm the catalytic convertor, but this is only an issue if you've got an engine which burns a lot of oil.

As far as calcium goes, I really don't know why GM has an issue with it, since the oils with higher calcium levels are generally regarded as the better oils. Calcium helps keep the engine clean, plus a lot of the newest calcium additives also provide better antiwear protection too I believe. You'll be seeing higher levels of calcium in a lot of the next generation of oils.

sawedoff

iTrader: (3)

Pay very close attention to when that info in that article was first published. See if it was revised. Alot of that info is out of date.Alot has happened over the span of 10-15 years in motorsports technology.Ash content would collect on the piston or combustion chamber and if everything was right, it would become a nice glow plug. The ashless issue is pretty much a non-issue with a race quality synthetic. Here I go, but I've been using a race quality oil in my car, and haven't had any problems.