Engine damage

[faffi]

This is from an Argentinian who is a member of another forum I frequent.

 

Quote

 

This happened to my ZX-10R. I switched to Mobil1 full synthetic car oil. It was around 300 miles on the engine. Almost 1mm was wiped out from at least 3 cam lobes, and all 16 tappets were destroyed. The engine was checked and dynoed right before the oil change and it was fine. I detected this as I noticed a decay in power that was confirmed then on the dyno. There was no apparent reason for the power drop so, once back from the dyno at home, I decided to open it for inspection. 

 

[Beemer]

So did everything else in the engine wear down so drastically as well?

[norcal616]

Car oil?!? 

[DewMan]

Not saying it isn't possible but if you only have one cam lobe that's prematurely worn I'd suspect the cam possibly being defective. Perhaps a problem in the hardening process?

[faffi]

All 16 valve shim retainers were damaged, and 3 lobes.

[fzar]

4 hours ago, faffi said:

I switched to Mobil1 full synthetic car oil. It was around 300 miles on the engine. Almost 1mm was wiped out from at least 3 cam lobes,

@norcal616car oil? WTF. 1mm from 3 cam lobes @DewMan I only see one being shown in the pictures, I agree with you both on this.

 

 

The engine was checked and dynoed right before the oil change and it was fine

 

Putting a bike on a dyno with 300 miles on it is strange to me, all I can say is this information been given is pretty vague. Is it 300 miles he/she put on it from brand new showroom? I doubt it or it would be back to the dealership no need to pull anything. I can't divulged into making anything from this, as I said its vague information to me.

[rick]

So why does one cam have damage and the other not?

 

Have a buddy who had a ZRX1200. He was always worried about the cam pitting history that apparently a common issue with those big Kaw motors. Considering the power his bike made (individual K&Ns and an Akra pipe), I don't think it saw red line much on public roads and it never got dynoed, yet still had some cam pitting that appeared early, but didn't get worse over 65k miles. As he's been an Amsoil devotee for a long, long time, I doubt the bike ever saw Mobil 1. 

 

You can find loads of cam pitting issues on the Concours forums as well - not exactly a race bike. Though there's tons of theories, no one but Kawasaki really knows why and they'll never admit to a problem - that's not likely oil - especially if some cams wear and some don't within the same motor. .  

[mjh937]

If this was caused by the oil I expect we would be seeing a lot more problems as Mobil 1 is fairly popular.  I do not know what would have caused it, but I suspect it would have happened no matter what oil he had used. 

[r1limited]

Here is my take on it and we all know I am clarvoient enough to see the real problem

 

BULLSHIT, that cam was already toast before M1 was put in.

[rider]

If that's all the damage it doesn't sound like an oil problem though it may be.  It sounds like an oil distribution problem.  Even using the cheap generic oil would likely cause damage in more places - rings, bearings, etc...  It just has to get where it's supposed to.  I could be way off, too.

We just used whatever we had when we were kids.  Mix and match whatever we could scrounge up.  Even used old oil to top off a time or two.  (Our source of income was mowing yards and picking up coke bottles and such, so...)  I'm not advising anyone ever do this, just saying we did it.

But, ours weren't high performance bikes by any means either, just old  hand-me-down dirt and street bikes.  Don't recall any wear problems.  And we rode em like we stole em.

[cyow5]

Can someone with more experience tell if that wear pattern is even realistic? The dotted-ness looks false to me since everything thing I have personally see was more of a straight line across the lobe. That pitting doesn't look like anything a tappet could do unless it had a protrusion on it at the mating surface. 

[r1limited]

25 minutes ago, cyow5 said:

Can someone with more experience tell if that wear pattern is even realistic? The dotted-ness looks false to me since everything thing I have personally see was more of a straight line across the lobe. That pitting doesn't look like anything a tappet could do unless it had a protrusion on it at the mating surface. 

It appears to be pitted scoring.  This can be caused by dirty oil, or other particles getting caught up.  Since we do not see the bucket it could be the bucket started to crack or fell apart, that can be caused by an improperly shimmed bucket.  I still call Bull on the description in the pic from agantiner micaneck

[pattonme]

cam lobe oil is low pressure. Now if the crank plain bearings were scored to hell and back then that would be confirmation of oil pressure problem (low or blocked). It has NOTHING to do with the oil as such.

 

There's 2 bad lobes pictured. I'm with R1, the camshaft was not hardened properly or the clearance was set wrong (or aftermarket tappet springs were used) and instead of following/ramping, the tip was crashing hard into the bucket. Cams go thru hell so metallurgy has to be spot on. Normally the tips 'flake' but seeing these with score marks my money is the bucket grenaded as well. 

[rick]

A lot of the online speculation was a change in the profile or faulty hardening. 

 

It's been a while since I saw my friends cams. My recollection was that they weren't as bad, but they also weren't exactly smooth. And yeah, it wasn't scoring, but little pits. 

 

And if I recall from the reading i did when he 1st talked about this, there was no consistency to whether it was intake or exhaust. 

 

Chevy wouldn't put Mobil 1 into a 600 hp Vette motor if the stuff was the cause of ugly wear. Gonna guess Cadillac also specs M1 for their big V8s.

 

 

[gregjet]

I will add another with a feeling that it doesn't look like an oil problem ( unless there was contamination in the oil off course...or the funnel used to put it in the motor). Still it doesn't look like wear but some sort of pitting. Poor hardface adhesion, perhaps? Granular problems with the substrate? Even possible steel grain contamination or crystal boundary problems below the hardfacing?

[shinyribs]

That "wear" on those lobes look like acid etching. Seen this many times when an engine gets parked for a period of time with dirty oil in it. Those are not striations or score marks from lack of lubrication, that is metal decay, for whatever reason. Lack of lubrication leaves gnarly chewed up surfaces, not gleaming polished lobes with little pock marks. 

 

For whatever reason, polished component seem to be affected the worse by this. Cam lobes, shims,etc. Coarse surfaces like rods and rockers seem to always resist the etching. But it also stands to reason that polished surfaces are the ones that live in pools of oil. 

 

He better pop the crank out and look at the bottom end bearings. Every time I've seen a cam etch this badly the bearing inserts were also flaking. Just my two cents. 

 

But pictures can lie. If it's not etching I'd suspect a hardness issue like R1 mentioned. 

 

[faffi]

I know that the person having the issues is honest and doses't bullsh!t, but I agree that the issues could be related to something else than the oil. After the damage, he replaced the cams with race cams as well as the shim retaining buckets and have had no further issues. The alternator was replaced under warranty some time later and was free from debris, suggesting the oil filter and oil change caught the metal shavings. The engine has not been apart other than that, and there have not been any further issues. 

[pattonme]

44 minutes ago, faffi said:

I know that the person having the issues is honest and doses't bullsh!t, The engine has not been apart other than that, and there have not been any further issues. 

So why lead with a misleading title when the oil in question has billions of miles of successful, incident-free use? And did the person use M1 again after his top-end rebuild or go with something else? Did he get the old oil analyzed by a professional firm?

[Cruizin]

This is such Bullshet. Oil wouldn't cause that damage. Especially on an engine with less than 500 miles on it. 

 

@faffi Please change the thread title. You trying to get me sued by Mobil? 

[faffi]

I've changed the topic, although the title didn't positively state the damage was caused by the oil, only that it took place with Mobil 1 in the engine.

 

The owner thinks the risk is too great to try the oil again. Note that it was oil for cars that potentially could lack the film strength to withstand a 13000 rpm motorcycle engine with plenty of cam lift. If so, the type of oil rather than the brand would then likely be the culprit - I brought it up merely because Mobil 1 is typically recognized as the best there is, yet here was an engine that for one reason or the other failed while using Mobil 1. So I found it intriguing. You can also find tons of reports of spun main bearings on Subarus using Mobil 1, but again it is more likely a result of a combination of too thin oil and a poor design rather than the brand of oil. Still heavily debated, though.

 

The owner of the 10R is not reluctant to use Mobil products - in fact, he has often mentioned them as maker of good oils - but that he will only run motorcycle specific oils in his motorcycle engines.

[pattonme]

very few oils can withstand cam loads on a sheer/film strength alone and especially in a no-pressure scenario. That's why additives like Zinc. Car vs Moto-specific is mostly just hogwash. The contaminants in car oil affect clutch action, not metal on metal contact in other parts of the engine.

[Beemer]

The edge of it looks all chewed up. What's up with that?

[r1limited]

There are so many missing variables, it wont matter if the title is changed, oil is not the root cause.  I will stand by what I stated what this guy claims is bullshit

[faffi]

To be fair he never stated it as a fact. What he said was that he switched to Mobil 1 after 300 miles and shortly after the top end went. For all he and we know the dyno run began the process, but was terminated before anybody noticed. But if I had the same experience, I would have concluded the same way, and that is to use something else to lubricate my engines from here on. Just to avoid that nagging feeling, if nothing else

[pattonme]

14 minutes ago, faffi said:

To be fair he never stated it as a fact. What he said was that he switched to Mobil 1 after 300 miles and shortly after the top end went.

By that level of logic I could just as easily say "I changed my oil and did a dyno-run and my cams grenaded. Therefore, never change your oil, or never dyno your engine, or at least don't do so right after changing the oil." All of which is nonsense. Running full-synth at 300 miles is not really advised anyway. Though maybe modern metallurgy has relegated that to old-wive's tale status.