Quelling Piston Slap - Best oil

[99obw]

Delvac may be difficult to find, perhaps a truckstop or a supplier catering to the trucking industry.

 

Rotella is available at Walmart, maybe also at Tractor Supply or similar.

[friendly_jacek]

Both 5W40 rotella and 5W40 mobil1 (aka delvac1) should be available at Walmart.

[99obw]

Last I knew the 5w-40 Mobil 1 Truck and SUV had been discontinued. A synthetic 5w-40 from Mobil is pending under a new name, but I haven't seen it yet. It may available, but when I looked a few weeks ago there was none to be had.

[mrk610]

Thanks guys ,

 

This board rules:headbang: . I'll try walmart.

 

Mike K

[mrk610]

OK all,

 

Found the rotella 5w40 at wally world. Was excited because i found it I didn't read the bottle .It is a syn oil. I have tried syn oil mobil 1 and it does nothing for the slap noise . The last oil change i used the castrol start up and it really quieted the slap down . With the rotella it makes the car sound like there is no oil at all. The slap is real bad and I have lifter noise for the 1st time . So I.m going to change back to the castrol this weekend .I'll let ya know what the outcome is .

 

I also got a suby filter from the dealer and wow is it small and black not white .

I think I'm going to use the purilator filter instead.

 

Mike K

[Setright]

As long as the filter has the anti-drain-back valve in it, it's fine. The surface area in there is not reduced, only the size of the can.

[99obw]

I have a week or two on the Rotella 5w-40, and I'm very dissapointed. It's as loud as a typical 5w-30 in the Subaru, and the Jeep is making those tractor noises again!!! I won't be using it again except in the diesel Jetta during the winter. Please oh please bring back my beloved Mobil 1 5w-40 (at $4.00 per quart)!!

[cookie]

When I was a kid people used to get Diesel oil from work and put it in thier cars. When the car was full of crud the high detergent was famous for puggin lifters and such. All you heard were the scare stories so I never heard of any good benefits.

It seems like if you ran it from an early age it would be a superior oil, I'm sorry to hear it was no quieter.

[Scoobaroo]

Since the problem isn't the oil, oil shouldn't be expected to quiet the slap.

Dino, synthetic, straight weight, multi weight, thick, thin. Knock yourself out. Try them all. Won't make much difference if any.

 

The 2.5 is a woodpecker engine. Short piston skirts and loose clearances.

Seems to be oil temperature related, not coolant temperature related. Our Outback makes the noise even after the temp gauge is in the normal range. Shortly after that, when the oil temperature stabilizes, the piston slap stops.

[cookie]

Oil made a pretty big change in mine, but the 15-50 Mobil 1 I'm running is pretty thick.

It really depends on a few things, just how much wear you have, the temp, and the oil you are using.

With 10-30 Pennzoil dino my car slapped until it reached full temp in the am and every start after that till full temp. With Mobil 1 10-30 about the same.

With the heavy Mobil 1 it slaps for about a minute or until the temp guage gets halfway up, then not for the rest of the day. If I leave the car for a week it slaps longer on startup becuse the oil has drained away and is not taking up the clearance.

If the day is very cold it slaps a bit more, if it's really warm no slap at all on startup.

[mrk610]

Well it has been 10 days on the rotella oil . Even with the weather getting warm it still knocks bad . I'm going to change the oil again this weekend . I'm going back to the castrol 10w30 start up in the green bottle . It seemed to be the best to quiet the slap noise .

 

Mike K

[mrk610]

Well changed back to the castrol . What a difference my car is so happy now . I still have the slap but not nearly as loud or as long . I sent my oil into Blackstone lab when I changed the castrol out . I got back my best report yet .

 

Mike

[a97obw]

Aw nuts.:-\ I just went to Wally World and got the Delvac diesel engine oil. It's a 15-40, and it aint no synthetic. Bought 2 gallon bottles of the stuff because they didn't stock it in quarts.

 

It was the ONLY thing I saw that was "Delvac".

 

Now I'm pondering the lesser of the two evils......dealing with Wally World customer service for a return or dumping the stuff in my Outback.:cool:

[blitz]

No worries. IMO, a 15W-40 fleet-oil (Delvac, Delo, Long-Life, etc.) is some of the sweetest stuff you can run in a sube.

 

I'd probably limit it to starting temps of 40*f or higher.

 

**** ******!

[a97obw]

Thanks for the assurance Blitz! I didn't want to deal with customer service for the return anyway!

 

I've always used valvoline 10-30 in my Subarus, I dumped about 6 ounces or so of Seafoam in the crankcase this afternoon, and figured I'd change the oil this evening. Odd how there is no mention of "how long" to leave the Seafoam stuff in the crankcase to do its thing. Not on the can, nor the Seafoam website. Only thing it mentions is that it is "instantaneous"......so do you drive around for XXX miles with the stuff in the engine, or just run it for a few minutes then flush with an oil change?

 

I couldn't find any agreement about it in the "seafoam" thread that is very active in this forum either.

[99obw]

Seafoam is bound to thin the oil quite a bit, I personally wouldn't leave it in for long. On the other hand, based on how volatile seafoam is, one could probably argue that it will evaporate out relatively quickly. Perhaps BITOG has something to say about it.

[dragonevo]

This is a good bump on the thread..

 

 

But do you still run the Diesel oil in your Subaru with good result?

 

 

Im thinking of testing it to to see if my tick gets better when engine is cold EJ25.

 

Live in Sweden so close to same weather as Denmark...

 

 

Or do anyone else can say with oil who cures the tick the best?

[porcupine73]

I've been running Amsoil 'HDD' HDEO (heavy duty engine oil) in my soobs for many years, it's 5W30, and the engines are pretty quiet. The quietest oil I have run was Amsoil 20W50 racing oil (no friction modifiers I believe, and wear protection similar to HDEO's). I even ran it in the winter a few times, plus on that oil, I once got the best ever mileage I have achieved in my '00 OBW.

[dragonevo]

Okay, so living in Denmark and listening to that little man with a hammer banging on my engine after a frosty morning cold start, I have been researching and testing a range of different oils. A few days ago, I tried yet another new oil, and this time I may have cracked it!

 

Mobil Delvac 1 5W-40

 

NOW, before the arguments begin, here's a list of the other oils I have tried:

 

Mobil 1 5W-50

Mobil 1 5W-40

Mobil 1 5W-30

Mobil 1 0W-40

 

Castrol GTX 10W-40

Castrol Magnatec 5W-40

 

Redline 10W-40

 

Shell Ultra 5W-40

 

 

So, a Diesel engine oil works best! Delvac 1 is API-SL approved so it's perfectly safe in petrol engines. However, compared to almost every other 5W-40 oil, it has the highest viscosity at low temps. Yet it thins out nicely to comply the engine tolerances at operating temperature. This last point is a "worry" when using Mobil 1 5W-50 oil, because the oil could be considered too thick to circulate fast enough, and also strain the oil pump unnecessarily.

 

Most 5W-xx oils have a viscosity of 75-80 centistokes at 40C, but Delvac 1 comes in at 102cst.

 

 

So henceforth, Delvac 1 5W-40 is my recommendation for the best oil to quell that nasty piston slap.

 

Sound is muted, far less metallic, and goes away quickly.

 

 

Well it should be better and more quiet if you use the Mobil 5w50 that you tried, because the "centistoke" value at 40C is higher on Mobil 5w50 than Mobil 5w40 delvac.... if you read the specs...

[Setright]

Ouch, this is an old thread.

 

Knowing my own attention to detail, I cannot imagine that I overlooked the 40C rating on 5W-50. Perhaps the specs have changed through the years.

 

Delvac is still a good oil, but in more recent years, I have switched over to Valvoline products.

 

MaxLife 5W-40 keeps the piston slapping down, AND stops those annoying weeping seals. So for winter, this is what goes in.

 

Summer is VR-5W-50, also Valvoline.

 

 

Anyone who has not yet tried Valvoline Synpower TDL 75W-90 in their manual gearbox, has something to look forward to!

[mack-attack]

so i read through this old thread quick. what is the best oil to try and quiet down the "slap"? wouldnt 10w30 be better then 5w40?

[Fairtax4me]

[thread jack]

 

Anyone who has not yet tried Valvoline Synpower TDL 75W-90 in their manual gearbox, has something to look forward to!

This caught my attention. Though I'm also glad to hear that my favorite store brand Valvoline High mileage oil helps to stifle piston slap in the 2.5.

What benefit does the Synpower gear oil offer? I have tried a few different synthetic gear oils to try to correct slow synchros and it always just moves the problem from one gear to another. :-p

[spazomatic]

Anyone who has not yet tried Valvoline Synpower TDL 75W-90 in their manual gearbox, has something to look forward to!

 

I'm gonna go get some and see if it'll help my 3rd gear grind in my GL.

 

for engine oil, I use mobil1 5-30 in my '06, and valvoline 10-30 in my '84. I use Wix filters exclusively, and in both of them I add a bottle of STP. it's real clingy, and has a lot of zinc in it. the 1.8 in the '84 (229k) doesn't tick at all, and the 2.5 in the '06 doesn't have a noticeable slap. well now that I think about it, I guess it does have it a little, if I put a load on it when it's cold out.

not enough to bother me though!

[ivans imports]

check this out i have a machine called a piston knurller puts a xhatch on the skirts of pistons to make them grow i do it as a curtisy when i do head gaskets they come in rattleing and leave silent i even do it when i rebiuld the engines makes them so tight that they are hard to turn the breakin is longer but they run verry well its the only way i was ablle to stop the noise i'm on my 10-12 moter ive done that way no combacks and all running silent still

[mack-attack]

So I changed my oil and tried the dino rotella 10-w30 and some lucas synthetic engine oil. I had some dino mobile1 5-w20 in it previously.

well see how this handles the piston slap.

I just hope this "diesel" oil is safe...