Thread: For Don Shilady

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UPDATE Part A

Last Thursday I got my annual Virginia Inspection for just $20 with no corrections needed at 2015 miles! That is the first time I obtained State Inspection without some expensive modifications so maybe, just maybe my car is "finished", nah probably not.

Part B CAFE Seminar

Yesterday I attended a final seminar for an M.S. degree by an employee of Afton Lubrication on reducing friction through advanced motor oil additives and learned some new things! The CAFE study shows that in 1977 the national average mpg was 17 and that agrees with the 1977 Camaro Z28 as well as my 355 SBC with ported 882 heads, headers, 9:1 CR and Edelbrock 4 barrel carburetor. Modern Camaros and Dodge Hellcats get well over 30 mpg despite much higher power. For a while I thought these improvements were due to fuel injection and multi-gear automatic transmissions (the Hellcat has an 8-speed auto) but the seminar yesterday said that as much as 50% of fuel energy goes to overcome FRICTION and there is hope that an additional 25% improvement can be obtained by improving motor oil. To be sure the projected improvement still includes ZDDP additive although at too low a concentration for flat tappet cams. The idea is that some additional organic agents can be added to react with an iron surface and the ZDDP (Zinc ditho diphosphate) to form a coating of steel/iron parts with less friction than with ZDDP alone. Of course that is great that such scientific research is going on (nearby to my home just north of Richmond, VA) and offers better mpg. However it was mentioned that it is anticipated that in the near future the CAFE standard will be raised further to about 54 mpg! Is that possible? I recall there used to be contests to maximize mpg using high pressure tires and slow driving with coasting to achieve more than 100 mpg but those driving practices are impractical. This is alarming to me and it would seem that auto engineers have already done major improvements to transmissions and fuel systems so perhaps 40 mpg is reasonable to expect due to improved motor oil but 54 mpg seems to me as an unreasonable goal set by idealistic politicians? All of this development of improved motor oil will still not help those with flat tappet cams but the "game" seems to be to just meet the conditions for "next year's model" so the lubrication engineers really have a challenge here! Meanwhile I expect to still use AMS-oil ZROD 10W-30 for my flat tappet cam setup in a 1976 SBC 350 block but even though my replica A-roadster weighs only about 2600 pounds and has a 700R4 OD I still can get only 17 mpg at best using a carburetor. I am appreciative that AMS-oil still offers the ZROD series with higher ZDDP content for flat tappet cams. Just some interesting news that shows developments in auto lubrication.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder