Amsoil Engine Tear Down Pics

[pantygnome]

Correction, per

the guide is between the two cams, must be removed in the original photos.
View attachment 148371

Slight tangent, but subscribe to that channel and watch his weekly teardowns (and sometimes mid-week videos too)

I look forward to the teardown videos every Saturday, great content.

 

[K.Aoi]

Bad design utilising a low class - high load lever action - plus hydraulic limitations. Frequent failures - short service life.

Subaru EJ and Honda SOHC had a decent non-hyd design with cam under shaft mounted roller rockers
with large circumference rollers to keep speed down. Other than that, it is hard to complain about inverted buckets under oil
for simplicity - though an infrequent adjustment can be difficult.

Is this switch to rollers all driven by low saps 20 grade and even lighter oils? Maybe.

They've been used largely with great success for many decades now... Once again, people will complain about literally anything that improves efficiency. Roller followers have significantly lower friction than cam-on-bucket.

 

[K.Aoi]

Slight tangent, but subscribe to that channel and watch his weekly teardowns (and sometimes mid-week videos too)

I look forward to the teardown videos every Saturday, great content.

Yeah his channel is great.

 

[4WD]

I don't know if I would call that extended. The OEM interval, as dictated by the Maintenance Minder, could be as long as 10K.

We had a 2013 for 150k … the OLM would get you to about 7k with mixed driving … so he’s been 2x that …
it never used a drop of oil … just the plastic stuff that I got out in front of by doing all of it at 108k …

 

[ARCOgraphite]

They've been used largely with great success for many decades now... Once again, people will complain about literally anything that improves efficiency. Roller followers have significantly lower friction than cam-on-bucket.

Not many decade maybe 20 years. Not complaining about rollers - just bad implementation of rollers. Again, a 3rd class lever under the cam is not good.
Ask the pentastar owners how good they are. But here we have a combination of bad engineering and bad materials - destined to fail.

The subaru and Honda SOHC roller cam design is robust but complex. I do NOT like the paired exhast rockers though here

Subaru EJ head

 

[OVERKILL]

Not many decade maybe 20 years. Not complaining about rollers - just bad implementation of rollers. Again, a 3rd class lever under the cam is not good.
Ask the pentastar owners how good they are. But here we have a combination of bad engineering and bad materials - destined to fail.

The subaru and Honda SOHC design is robust but complex. I do NOT like the paired exhast rockers though here

Subaru EJ head

View attachment 148395

The Ford Modular uses the same arrangement:
DOHC:

SOHC:

These last forever.

The Modular was introduced in 1991, so that's 32 years ago.

 

[K.Aoi]

The Ford Modular uses the same arrangement:
DOHC:

SOHC:

These last forever.

The Modular was introduced in 1991, so that's 32 years ago.

So does VW on the EA888 and EA211, not as sure about the VR6 but I wouldn't be surprised. The problem in Stellantis/FCA's case was poor/soft camshaft metals. The same is true on the Hemis going back years.

 

[OVERKILL]

So does VW on the EA888 and EA211, not as sure about the VR6 but I wouldn't be surprised. The problem in Stellantis/FCA's case was poor/soft camshaft metals. The same is true on the Hemis going back years.

The HEMI's have lifters that pack it in due to improper hardening. Though the cam cores being SADI certainly doesn't help.

 

[JohnnyJohnson]

The HEMI's have lifters that pack it in due to improper hardening. Though the cam cores being SADI certainly doesn't help.

So what I hear you saying is a lot of the problems we hear about here and HEMI's should be getting fixed under warranty. Another batch of customers taking it in the shorts?

 

[OVERKILL]

So what I hear you saying is a lot of the problems we hear about here and HEMI's should be getting fixed under warranty. Another batch of customers taking it in the shorts?

There have been MANY revisions of the lifters at this point, the latest batch, which I THINK was post 2016? was supposed to solve the problem. They went with larger needles in the rollers.

Yes, if it fails under warranty, it should obviously be covered. Of course not all of them, not even a large percentage of them fail. There are just many millions of those engines out there and so ultimately we end up hearing about it. GM has a very similar (but arguably worse) problem but their lifter design fails differently and isn't as "easily" remedied since it isn't just a hardness issue.

 

[Bill7]

Here is one from Red Line previously posted.

View attachment 148298

That engine in that photo looks newer than new - like it just came off the assembly line. Would you know the # of miles on that engine, the OCI, viscosity oil used, and which version of Red Line oil it was using. Also please provide link to the original post. If that engine has high mileage and was using extended OCI and is that clean, I would seriously consider switching to Red Line.

 

[Skippy722]

There have been MANY revisions of the lifters at this point, the latest batch, which I THINK was post 2016? was supposed to solve the problem. They went with larger needles in the rollers.

Yes, if it fails under warranty, it should obviously be covered. Of course not all of them, not even a large percentage of them fail. There are just many millions of those engines out there and so ultimately we end up hearing about it. GM has a very similar (but arguably worse) problem but their lifter design fails differently and isn't as "easily" remedied since it isn't just a hardness issue.

A quick and dirty look shows they’re on the 11th revision. They’re applicable all the way back to 2006.

 

[buster]

That engine in that photo looks newer than new - like it just came off the assembly line. Would you know the # of miles on that engine, the OCI, viscosity oil used, and which version of Red Line oil it was using. Also please provide link to the original post. If that engine has high mileage and was using extended OCI and is that clean, I would seriously consider switching to Red Line.

Their Euro looks good, but it's likely not good for long drain. It's on the acidic side. However, I have seen some oddball RL UOAs up to near 20k miles that were good so who knows. I would have likely tried Red Line again if had they made their HP Oils with a more modern additive package (lower SA) and retained the PAO/Ester base oil, especially because most engines today are GDI. Their Noack is the best. Always kind of been on the fence with RL. It's great at certain things.

I would say if you kept RL within it's usable limits, engine cleanliness will be as good as it gets. Too far and it won't look as good.

@RDY4WAR said: "Killer base oil blend, as always, but kinda mediocre on the additive package. I guess they wanted to adhere to the SAPS requirements. That Noack is excellent. I would like a higher starting TBN, at least add 300-500 ppm of hard base Mg to get it up to at least 8. That or increase the treat rate of the add pack by 15-20%. This oil likely isn't meant for more than 7,500-10,000 miles anyway, and I'm also looking at it as someone who couldn't care less about emissions requirements."




https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/threads/how-well-does-redline-oil-clean-engine-varnish.280158/

 

[Bill7]

Their Euro looks good, but it's likely not good for long drain. It's on the acidic side. However, I have seen some oddball RL UOAs up to near 20k miles that were good so who knows. I would have likely tried Red Line again if had they made their HP Oils with a more modern additive package (lower SA) and retained the PAO/Ester base oil, especially because most engines today are GDI. Their Noack is the best. Always kind of been on the fence with RL. It's great at certain things.

I would say if you kept RL within it's usable limits, engine cleanliness will be as good as it gets. Too far and it won't look as good.

@RDY4WAR said: "Killer base oil blend, as always, but kinda mediocre on the additive package. I guess they wanted to adhere to the SAPS requirements. That Noack is excellent. I would like a higher starting TBN, at least add 300-500 ppm of hard base Mg to get it up to at least 8. That or increase the treat rate of the add pack by 15-20%. This oil likely isn't meant for more than 7,500-10,000 miles anyway, and I'm also looking at it as someone who couldn't care less about emissions requirements."




https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/threads/how-well-does-redline-oil-clean-engine-varnish.280158/

Thanks buster for the url. It looks like he was using several different oils and cleaning additives like Kreen. It's hard to give credit to RedLine only.

The thread starter's message # 40 on the bottom of page 2 that shows his varnish/sludge looks really bad. Sludge like that in his before photos was likely caused by not changing his oil often enough. It's a shame how people can neglect their cars and then have an engine full of that glossy black sludge.

Jag's post of message #44 on page 3 was interesting:
"I've used Redline over many OCIs to try to remove varnish but it made no significant improvement. No motor oil I ever tried significantly helped and I tried many high-end oils." So using RedLine is not a solution.

My belief is that preventative maintenance is really the only defense against sludge.
I think it's a good idea to change my oil based on the severe service schedule in the owner's manual, with a good full synthetic oil.
Also I like using a high mileage oil which treats oil seals so they don't leak internally in the engine (casuing oil consumption) or externally (causing oil leaks on the ground).

 

[mahanddeem]

These pics are like one soccer team gets out on the pitch and starts scoring goals when there's no opponent. Yeah that's a super team look they are scoring
Probably Mobil1 would have achieved the same (or better result), or Supertech?

 

[doublebase]

Like someone else said; the engine only has 72k miles on it, hard to gather really anything from those pictures...I imagine most any oil would leave a 72k engine looking like that, even with 10,000-15,000 intervals when it’s that young. No?

 

[BMWTurboDzl]

Impressed the factory turbo still survives this long with a tune and towing, those particular turbos are incredibly failure-prone.

Other than using quality oil the turbo isn't under more stress because it's passively operated (ie. exhaust gases).

Rod bearing on the other hand would be interesting to see.

 

[Pablo]

Fascinating, but not unexpected reactions.

We have posts all over, mere speculation, saying how 10K-15K OCI's will destroy and utterly sludge all engines. Yet we have a small tuned engine, pulling a trailer, for 10 years and 10-15K oil changes and people just say any oil could have done better with zero proof, it's nothing, no stress, etc .

Amazing.

 

[ESP9935]

The Ford Modular uses the same arrangement:
DOHC:

SOHC:

These last forever.

The Modular was introduced in 1991, so that's 32 years ago.

Those stock hydraulic lash adjusters and roller followers (specifically the ones that came in the 05/06 Ford GT and 2007-2014 GT500) have been used reliably in applications spinning well over 10,000 rpm and making upwards of 3200 HP.

ARCO is simply off base on this topic

 

[4WD]

Fascinating, but not unexpected reactions.

We have posts all over, mere speculation, saying how 10K-15K OCI's will destroy and utterly sludge all engines. Yet we have a small tuned engine, pulling a trailer, for 10 years and 10-15K oil changes and people just say any oil could have done better with zero proof, it's nothing, no stress, etc .

Amazing.

BITOG = home of confirmation bias …