VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1912-1928 oils ain't oils for a 28

In this day and age of space age lubricants, wouldn't it be advisable to fork out the extra cash to put a super duper lubricant in the engine. Lets face it, engine rebuilds cost an arm and a leg, let alone the inconvenience. And a lot of damage is caused by lubricant breakdown and contamination. My 28 has a good filter on it. I drive it every day to and from my work, and I change the oil every 1500 -2000 miles. Parts are getting harder to find, and more expensive to repair. Any thoughts on this topic???

As a relative beginner in the vehicle restoration game, I would like to see comprehensive description of recommended oils. For example, what type of oil should I use in my 28 engine? Where I live rarely gets down to freezing, so the choice probably is not as critical for me as it may be for those of you living in North America/Canada/UK.
Tim.

Synthetic oils have superior properties compared to mineral oils. They will give better protection and longer life in modern engines. I am not sure about older engines. Modern engines have higher crankcase temperatures, much better sealing, less leakage past rings, etc. so contamination from exhaust gas, fuel dilution, water retention are all less than will be expected from then older engines. The major problem with oil life is contamination which produces corrosive acids and oxidation of the base oil. It is not breakdown of the oil from friction. If you could analyse the oil periodically then you could determine if synthetics would be good for your engine. It would be expensive and likely not worth the cost. Changing mineral oil based lubricants often is easy and is cheap insurance.

Another factor that should be considered is filtration, modern engines do a much better job of captureing much smaller particles than any of the older filters do. The old by-pass filters used up thru 1954 and even later on some models were only emergency traps for the most part. therefore the best one could do is to change the oil often. I have noticed that the oil in my 53 (when useing the same high performance oil as I use in a modern 350) gets dirty much quicker than it does in the modern engine driven in the same environment, I wonder if this is an indication of the differences in the engines and maybe the oil in older engines must be changed much quicker there are more differences than we realize in the old and new, if so maybe the difference in cost will justify useing a petroleum based motor oil rather than the expensive syn. oil?