Originally Posted By: Matt97
Car was a year out of warranty ,Kia not interested .Tensioner was on max adjustment and the inlet cam had jumped about 5 teeth due to the slack chain .
Some people here say "Always follow the owners manual .... Do you know more than the engineer who designed the vehicle ?"
Then somebody like you has a cam chain that skip 5 teeth. Did the engineer design it to do that ? I don't think so.
For me, three things protect cam chains
- Regular oil changes
- High viscosity to resist shear
- High ZDDP zinc to coat and protect the chain metal
I would consider:
A mixed fleet HDEO 15W40 mineral like Delo, Delvac, Rimula / Rotella etc
A Euro grade (A3/B4) 40 grade oil as either a synthetic (0W40, 5W40) or a semi-synthetic (10W40). These 40 grade Euro oils have about 1000 ppm Zinc, which is 200-300 ppm more than a typical ILSAC oil.
Here is a VOA from the Russian Oil Club for Shell Helix HX7 10W40, it shows 1039 ppm zinc. It's a very common and affordable oil in both Europe and Australia, not sure about South Africa.
(ROC HX7 VOA)
BTW Ford like a lot of zinc to protect their cam chains too. The Ford 913-C/D oil spec is high zinc and it's the world spec for many Ford cars (eg the Mustang in Australia). But being the world spec, everybody uses it, except North America, since ( I assume) it has too zinc in it and so must be classified as an API SL oil, not SN, and they seem to have a problem with that. It's an A5/B5 oil, which is a higher standard and will do me fine.
Anyway, probably more than half the cars in Australia, of all makes and models, run on 15W40 mineral or 10W40 semi-synthetic oil. It works fine. Something to consider.