GM High Tech Magazine: Project Thunderchicken LT1 Teardown on Royal Purple

[outrun]

Hey Yall,

I have from the past couple months read into the debate with some people here citing Royal
Purple as a "snake-oil" If any of you are readers of GM High Tech magazine for the past
couple years they have had a project Trans Am with a Lingenfelter built LT1 project called "Thunderchicken."
Since the last build of the engine in 1999 they have been running the OEM Royal Purple 10W30 formulation.
This month's magazine has a photo of the engine bearings removed. The article noted that even
after the daily driver and weekend track abuse they are quite clean with significant life left.

Just food for thought. I am sure Mobil 1, Redline, AMSOIL, Shaeffers, Kendals etc would produce similar results.
Thier just seems to be a lot "scare-tactics" by many oil producers out thier against other synthetics

 

[Ken2]

Just an update...Kendall oil is currently just another brand of ConocoPhillips. I guess it used to be something special--I've never lived in a region where Kendall was widely distributed.

Ken

 

[Ghost SS]

I beleive I read that article at a friends house....didn't they also say the car had like 30k miles on that motor? I sure hope the bearings still had a lot of life on it after that low of miles.

 

[Spector]

quote:

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Originally posted by outrun:
Hey Yall,

Since the last build of the engine in 1999 they have been running the OEM Royal Purple 10W30 formulation.This month's magazine has a photo of the engine bearings removed. The article noted that even after the daily driver and weekend track abuse they are quite clean with significant life left.

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How many miles since 1999. 10,000 miles or 100,000. After 100,000 the statement "with siginificant life left" is meaningful. After 10,000, well, you know what I mean.

 

[Patman]

Keep in mind that the guy who owns this car (Johnny Hunkins) drives it all the time in the summer, and races it a LOT. So since 1999 he's probably put a good amount of abuse on this engine. I'd be willing to bet he's got a good amount of road miles on it too, as he's not afraid to travel with this car, even with it's stroker motor in it. I believe his engine puts out something like 400rwhp too (which is at least 450hp at the crank) so it's a very stout piece indeed. If they pulled apart his engine and found things to still be like new, that is definitely impressive. The car sees both drag racing and road racing, both of which are very hard on the oil (especially the road racing)