A slippery situation

Unknown

One of the advantages of teaching with a fellow who's an industrial

chemist by training is you learn all kinds of neat stuff.



Yesterday at lunch, the subject of energy, petroleum and all that came

up. When I asked about using bio-diesel-based petroleum replacement

products, such as refining it into gasoline or lubricating oil, my

colleague informed me that even most "conventional" motor oils today

have a very high synthetic component; he found this out when he was

working at Chicago Rawhide. It turned out that when SE-grade motor oil

was replaced with SF-grade motor oil, many of the commonly-used

materials for seals especially, were being attacked by the SF-grade,

but were perfectly usable in SE-grade or older.



I then ventured the question about antique, and especially pre-WWII

cars. Without even finishing the sentence, he said "very dangerous."

His reasons were that the contemporary additive packages can, and as

we have read from occassional horror stories in the major magazines,

occassionally do, cause all kinds of trouble.



The additivies used in modern oil will attack the rubber and cork

gaskets very badly and can also wash babbitt off of the bearings in

some cases, poured babbitt being especially susceptible to harm.



I asked him what to use, and he suggested that if you can still find

it to use a non-detergent straight-weight oil, as that poses the least

possible risk to cars of this vintage.



As I don't own a pre-war car, I don't even have a Hudson yet, I was

wondering if I could get some feedback from anyone on our discussion

and maybe help someone save their motor. This would also be

interesting to see what experiences have been and I can share them

with him.



Charlie Larkin