Motor oil resource for performance engines

[tmontague]

https://540ratblog.wordpress.com/

I stumbled across this website/blog after doing some reading online regarding lubrication of high performance engines. This is an absolute gem of information. For anyone who appreciates objective science based data without emotional rhetoric thrown into it, this is the website for you. Other resources like BITOG are somewhat useful but as with any online forum, it has becomes littered with rhetoric and opinion and it becomes hard to sift through it all.

This website give real world testing data completely objectively. This tests the endpoint of the oil and makes any specific ingredient in the oil irrelevant, in the most simplest way it just shows what works better than another oil.

It is written as all one blog post and constantly updated so you need to use ther control F function to find info on specific topics. To find his list of how various engine oils stack up search for " wear protection ranking ranking list" and you will see it.

This is the sort of data I geek out to and am always trying to look for so it is great to see someone do all of this work already. I will be going with a ow20 Quaker State synthetic oil for this upcoming track season due to this data. The only caveat to this info is that although you want to use the thinnest oil possible that offers the best protection, you have to be mindful of factory oil pressure specs.

Case in point: I thought my 5-8psi oil pressures at idle coming off of a 45 min track session (280*F) was too low and that I should increase from a 5w30 to a 40w hot viscocity oil (factory spec is 0w20). I was going to run a 5w40 euro spec oil for this upcoming season. I ended up searching the internet for Toyota's 2zr fe oil pressure specs and they are as follows:

3.6psi @idle and 22-58psi @3,000 rpm

I'm going to run a 0w20 with an excellent wear protection (quaker state) as I can get it on sale locally for just over $30 for 5L. This will keep the oil as cool as possible and free up the optimal amount of HP. I'll keep my eyes on oil pressure and if it falls below Toyota's specs then I will up it to a 30W oil and again to a 40w if needed. I doubt I will need to ever go above a 30w but I'm interested to see how pressures are on the 20w oil.

FWIW Amsoil's signature series 0w20 and 5w30 oils did the absolute best by a long shot, but to get those locally it is about $60 plus shipping to 5L. As the original author of the blog states - you don't necessarily need the absolute best wear rated oil, it just depends on how large of a safety margin you want to run and how hard you are pushing your engine.

The 2zr doesn't have flat tappets, it uses roller style tappets so it is relatively easy on oil so I personally don't see the need to run Amsoil oil and pay more than double. Interesting to note is that I was previously using Pennzoil Ultra Platinum 5w30 during last years long track season and as luck would have it, it tests really well for wear reducing ability. This is likely why my UOA came back pretty good despite having a lot of mileage on it and very hard use with extreme temps.

Anyways, thought I'd share a great resource for anyone else who likes to nerd out to no bs real world hard data