308 oil

9 quarts will be overfilled............unless you are constantly making tight turns.

 

We are in Loano .
This thing has 2x 13 L MAN 700 hp s which I need 74 L of 15/40 diesel truck oil per annum .
It makes Ferrari own ship feel a peanuts hobby .
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Most people have their opinion as to what oil is better, synthetics will leak, I only use mineral oil and it's the best etc. etc. The vast majority of these people have no evidence to back their claims up. I have spent a long time researching oils and undertaking used oil analysis on various vehicles to see the evidence to back up my thoughts. I completely agree with the common knowledge that the only two accepted oil filters for our engines are those with internal stand pipes from UFI and Baldwin.

1. Synthetic oils are 100%, no debate required, better than mineral oils period.
2. Modern synthetic oils have agents in them to effectively 'swell' seals to match the properties of mineral oils. The old wives tale that synthetics will make your seals leak has been debated over and over again and is generally not true. If you have an oil leak, it's generally a problem with the seal, not the oil.
3. Lowering the first 'W' number is widely accepted as being ok. The lower the 'W' number the better the cold start protection. A 0W or 5W is going to protect your engine much better at cold start than a 15W or 20W.
4. The higher, hot viscosity number has less room for movement unless you know the ins and outs of oil pressure, bearing clearances, engine age / wear etc. In 308's the original oil specified is 10W-50. I personally have kept to 50 weight oil even through Ferrari currently officially recommends full synthetic Shell Helix Ultra 5W-40. There is some thought that you can run lower and lower hot weight temperature until you see a drop in oil pressure to a certain threshold. I can see the logic in this but can not confirm either way. There is an oil blog out there 540Rat where I believe an Enzo owner is using 0W-20 where Ferrari specifies 10W-60!.
5. Despite popular belief a thinner oil [say 30 or 40 weight] will keep your engine cooler than a 50 or 60 weight. More oil will flow at any given point taking heat away from engine internals to the oil cooler helping to keep the engine cooler [remember one of the purposes of oil in your engine is to keep it cool].
6. High ZDDP oils are not required for our OHC engines. The oil Shell that Ferrari recommends is an API SP rated oil which will have only around 800PPM of zinc to comply with the SP formulation. This is something that is applicable to flat tappet pushrod engines, not ours.
7. Generally the amount of km driven in our cars vs how often the oil changed it's not going to matter too much what brand or type of oil you use. They are going to be all better than the oil originally specified by Ferrari back in the day.
8. In my personal experience, my car ran Elf Excellium Race 10W-60 when I purchased it. I then undertook UAO and replaced with Amsoil Signature Series 5W-50. The Amsoil had generally less wear metals than the Elf oil. I have also seen this trend in multiple other road and industrial vehicles when we have changed from Penrite, Castrol, Dexios etc. oils. All have shown less wear metals when using Amsoil. Even though the wear metals are less, it's not like they were high with the other oil so in reality when your talking a few parts per million of wear metals, it probably makes no difference. Once big difference I have seen is that many oils are out of grade after their specified service interval. Amsoil seems to stay in grade for much longer.
9. I'm not an Amsoil dealer, I've just had fantastic experience with their oils over 20+ years that I've verified by UOA. That's not to say that Redline or some other oil brand wouldn't perform as well. There are a vast number of independent tests all over the internet from YouTuber's, bloggers etc. that can vouch for Amsoil's performance in tests.
10. One of the limiting service factors with oils in our engines [especially carbureted] is fuel dilution. You may well find that the oil has moved 'out of grade' from fuel dilution long before the oil has actually degraded. You would not know this unless you undertake UOA and think that because your oil has only been in for 6 months and only done 500km that it's still fine. That may not be the case.

UOA gives you valuable information. It's cheap and gives you the info that you need to select the best oil for YOUR engine. Try a few different oils and see what works best for you. Don't fall into the trap of taking recommendations because someone else says they use it and its great in their engine but cant back it up.

 

Nice post!

FWIW, years ago when I was still building performance and competition engines, we routinely determined what oil viscosity to use by testing each engine on the dyno and reducing oil viscosity as low as possible and still maintain good oil pressure (10 psi/1000 RPM). We used the lowest viscosity oil that it took to do that on each engine. The lowest viscosity oil that works in the engine is better in a variety of ways, noted by Dave's post, above, but what mattered more for what we were doing was that lower viscosity oil was "free" HP. If you have two identical engines/cars, the car running 20wt oil is going to outrun the car using 40 wt oil. Admittedly, on the street, 5-6HP more than the "other guy" doesn't matter but for competition purposes it can easily be the difference between winning and losing.

Re oil going "out of grade," Yep, a common indicator that oil needs to be changed is seeing oil pressure readings that are "lower than they used to be." IOW, with fresh oil the idle pressure was, say, 25PSI at 800 RPM and now, some months later, you notice that it's 20 psi under the same conditions. Time to change!

"It makes Ferrari own ship feel a peanuts hobby ." I can sympathize - I owned/mantained a 53ft Hatteras motor yacht for 11 years...

 

Castro GTX 20-50 in the Dino the last 18yrs. Oh and the Baldwin filter as well.


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This is just speculation/wondering on my part re oil recommendations:

I mentioned that when building engines we then checked to see lowest viscosity oil that would maintain pressure. That was never more than 30Wt, often 20Wt. So thinking about that got me thinking about this:

1. Was it factory engine-building tolerance that required "heaver" say - 50Wt oil - to ensure that there was sufficient oil pressure on ALL engines, including those that randomly just happened to have all the clearances at the top limit? OR,

2. Was it because the factory was concerned that folks wouldn't change the oil regularly and that, as it fell out of grade, it wouldn't drop low enough to cause a problem with oil pressure? Or,

3. Was it because the contracted oil supplier of the time frame in question had that oil available at the RIGHT PRICE. yeah, cynical, I know.

One item that seems to support #1 , is that 1-2 quarts of oil use in 600 miles was considered by Ferrari to be acceptable oil consumption yet it seems that many (most?) of us have experienced less than a quart of use in over 2500-3000 miles.

Inquiring minds want to know!

 

Page 57 of the owners manual says normal oil consumption is 1-2 quarts every 600 miles. You should be thrilled to go 2000 miles without having to add any oil.

 

As I said before, that's an insane amount of oil use. IMO, Ferrari stated that so they didn't have to deal with warranty repairs re oil consumption. An engine with no piston rings shouldn't do much worse than that!

Ok, that last is a bit of an overstatement... But really, 1-2 quarts in 600 miles is awful. I've owned a bunch of 60's US muscle cars, all with much bigger engines and considerably more HP than my 328. None of them used more than a quart between 3000 mile oil changes.

 

Agreed that 1 litre in 600 miles is terrible, 2 would be ridiculous! (that's ~1,000 km). I had an Audi V8 in my 2007 S4 Avant replaced under warranty, just shy of 4 years - the long block was replaced for consumption of 1 litre every 1,000 km, which started after 3 years. Diagnosis was scored cylinder liners in 2 cylinders. The replacement engine used no oil between changes.

Let's remember that Ferrari had an issue with the 80-81 fuel injected 2 valve 308 engines with excessive oil consumption, and replaced a LOT of those engines under warranty. I haven't read about the cause of the issue on many of the cars, but it was isolated to those years and pre-1980 and post-1981 engines didn't have the problem. Possibly different pistons, rings, cylinder liners, or suppliers, or specifications change?

Gordon

 

Maybe try to get the engine changed under warranty ?
I’ve got the same so be interested to find out the oil recommendation for that particular model, 2V GTSi



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Been pleasantly surprised, I've put a few thousand miles on my 85 QV since buying it and it has burned no oil, as far as I can measure. Running M1 0W-40 in it. I don't think I could handle owning a burner... but also don't think I could handle having to do a rebuild, LOL.

 

0W-40 has an awfully light cold viscosity for Houston. You'll get better oil pressure and better startup wear protection if you switch to 20W-50 or at least 15W-40 if Mobil1 offers it.

 

I don't really care to argue oil anymore, but I believe this is quite the opposite of reality. Cold oil is always going to give you much more oil pressure than you need. Any oil is cold during a cold start, even if it is 110F ambient... that's cold oil.

From Pennzoil's 0W FAQ: "The first number of a multi-grade oil designates the ability for the oil to be pumped and flow at colder temperatures; the “W” stands for winter. Thus, a 0W oil will be able to flow faster and get to critical engine components better than a 5W or a 10W oil; especially in extreme cold conditions and at engine start-up."

https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ is fun reading. You can find a lot of threads there are on the benefits of 0W at startup.

 

Not true at all. Look at the material data sheets, specifically the viscosity at 40*C and 100*C - you'll see that the "cold" viscosity is at least 3 x thicker than the hot viscosity

Here's Mobil 1 0W40: Mobil 1™ FS 0W-40
Kinematic Viscosity @ 40 C, mm2/s, ASTM D445 71 (Centistokes)
Kinematic Viscosity @ 100 C, mm2/s, ASTM D445 12.9

Then Mobil1 15W50: Mobil 1™ 15W-50
Kinematic Viscosity @ 40 C, mm2/s, ASTM D445 125 (Centistokes)
Kinematic Viscosity @ 100 C, mm2/s, ASTM D445 18

For the 15W50, the cold viscosity (at 40C, ie ~103*F) is 7 TIMES thicker than the hot viscosity. It's also 50% thicker than the cold viscosity of the 0W40. Note also that those numbers are at 40C - perhaps ambient temps in Houston, but hotter than most other locations, where the ambient temp oil would be thicker yet. Ideally, you'd want cold oil viscosity that would be at least as thin as the hot oil, but oil characteristics don't work that way - especially mineral oils. With synthetics, they're able to manage provide lower cold viscosities while still providing stable hot viscosities that don't degrade early.

Startup wear protection - you want oil circulating to the bearing and load surfaces as quickly as possible - and thicker oil simply is harder to pump, takes significantly longer to reach the outer reaches of the engine, on the order of several seconds longer. That's several seconds of metal on metal operation before the oil reaches it, which is why it's said that somewhere around 80% of engine wear occurs at startup. You want the thinnest cold oil viscosity possible, to reach the engine parts as quickly as possible - so what you absolutely want is the 0W or 5W at the highest cold viscosity oils. You're noticeably and measurably reducing the lift of your engine with 15W or 20W oils.

Imagine pouring out a cup of molasses and a cup of olive oil - which one pours easier, which flows quicker? Which would pump to bearing surfaces faster? That's your thicker vs thinner argument, no question you want the thinnest oil possible. Reminder again, every oil is much thicker when cold than hot - and you want the thinnest possible oil for cold starts.

Another oil thick vs thin, hot vs cold comparison - the 0W40 you say is too thin for Houston, when cold at 71 Cs is still 4 times thicker than your preferred 15W50 oil when hot!

Regards,Gordon

 

What do you use in Calgary Gordon?

 

It appears that the fact that a 308 oil pump is positive displacement is being overlooked here. That is, the volume of oil pumped is not a significant function of viscosity, but a function of the rotational speed of the pump.

 

I've used the European Castrol 0W40 previously, but my last 3 oil changes have been with Pennzoil Platinum Euro 5W40.

 

Viscosity is a very significant factor in flow from a pump, when factored with pressure. Consider extremes to illustrate the point, putting molasses versus olive oil in the same closed pump system - the thick, heavy molasses with have much higher system pressure, but will flow more slowly, especially in small passages or bearing clearances. From a zero system pressure state like a cold start, the thinner, less viscous fluid will circulate more quickly at lower pressure once the pump starts - the preferred condition for engine lubrication.

 

Why will a lower viscosity fluid circulate more quickly? The pump puts out the same volume flow of oil regardless of viscosity (positive displacement). Where does the volume of oil go if not circulated through the engine? Yes, lower viscosity oil will flow at lower pressure, but not more quickly, unless the speed of the pump (volume flow rate) is reduced. In simple terms, assuming that the flow at start up (low engine RPM) is laminar, flow rate is proportional to pressure across the system divided by viscosity. If flow rate is constant (pump output) and you double the viscosity, the pressure across the system doubles. Olive oil molasses, water, if you pump the same volume flow through a system all that will be different is the pressure.

 

I also wanted to point out that there are condition (extreme cold) where lower viscosity oil will allow the engine to crank faster due to reduced friction. In such a case the flow rate of the oil will also be higher with lower viscosity oil and it will circulate faster. This is a result of insufficient power to spin the engine to normal cranking speed.

 

I've been using Mobil-1 15-50 in y 85 QV with no problems.