> Randall,
>
> Why do you have a problem with Castrol?
I didn't realize I said I did ... in public anyway. Lots and lots of people
use it with no reported problems, I'm certainly not going to argue that it
isn't a fine, conventional oil.
However, I have had two bad experiences that I attributed to the use of
Castrol GTX ... since I don't want to repeat those experiences, I personally
will not use it.
First one was many years ago (might not have been GTX, but it was the
commonly available Castrol oil at the time). This was my first car, a 62
Chevy 235ci L6 that I had torn down and rebuilt myself. Several months
after getting it put together and using a steady diet of Castrol (this was
after I switched away from Pennzoil), the oil pressure suddenly dropped
dramatically, to the point you could not see any pressure on the (added)
gauge at hot idle. When I got the pan off (lot more work on that Chevy than
on a TR), I discovered that the pressure relief valve was coated with a thin
film of sticky clear goo ... and was stuck in it's bore. One of the local
'experts' said that sometimes happened with Castrol (but of course I can't
prove it beyond the fact that was what I was using and I don't know where
else the goo might have come from). Anyway, I cleaned up the valve, put it
all back together, switched to another brand of oil, and never had the
problem again.
Second one was perhaps 10 years ago now, on a 80 Chevy 2.6 V6. It had
perhaps 130,000 miles on it at the time, and had been running on a steady
diet of Valvoline Racing oil. Used just about 1 quart in 5000 miles ... I
changed the oil when it was a quart low. For some reason, all the discount
stores quit carrying Valvoline oil for awhile, so I switched to Castrol
20W50 GTX. Less than 2000 miles later, it was down 2 quarts ! It settled
in to a steady diet of 1 quart in about 800 miles on the Castrol. Switching
back to the Valvoline Racing only brought it up to about 1/1200 ... but
Valvoline Synthetic pulled it back up to 1/5000 ! That engine went another
120,000 on VS without ever having the heads or the pan off (I did change the
valve seals trying to stop the oil burning). It finally died when I
foolishly tried a quart of Rislone in it, to see what happened.
Guess what other product I'll never put in a car engine again <g> In
retrospect, I should've removed the broken crankshaft to hang on the wall as
a souvenir ... but I just left it for dead.
Randall
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