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Living the CLEAN life pays off After nearly 17 years on the road (the last 4 or 5 with limited use) my 1989 SHO was undergoing a camectomy, getting Josh's new .20 cams. Upon opening up the valve covers for the first time in about 3 years, we found that the heads were spotless. Not just nice, not just pretty clean, but except where there was oil puddled, the heads were not even that golden color that indicates a layer of oil debris, no matter how thin. These were aluminum and like new. This was a surprise to me, and I expected the engine to be pretty clean. The original owner was a traveling salesman that visited the neighboring states and put 45,000 miles on the car in just under two years. He had the oil changed every 3000 miles with Valvoline conventional oil, like clockwork at a shop I knew. I kept that up till I changed to synthetic Amsoil Series 2000 0-30, at 55,000 miles. At about 60,000 miles I installed an Amsoil bypass oil filter kit. This super fine cleans a small percent of the oil all the time, and my oil change regimen changed to changing the spin-on filter every 10,000 miles and the oil every 25,000 miles. The bypass filter doesn't get changed till it plugs up, and it is still going strong. At about 160,000 miles, I took the car out of daily service and at that point changed to Amsoil XL-7500 oil and changed it and the spin-on filter every 7500 miles, or once a year. Then I tried Valvoline Maxlife oil to see if it would slow a small but persistent drip from the front and rear seals. I used the Maxlife in the fall and winter for occasional drives and changed to the Amsoil XL-7500 for summer when I raced the car during track days. I am happy to report that after just two partial years using the Maxlife, the drips are reduced by a lot, even when running the Amsoil again. So we come to April 2005 and popping the valve covers for the first time in a long time. This is what we found: click on the thumbnails to see the bigger pictures (big downloads so you can see detail). Note the original cams show almost no wear, the bearing surfaces are like new and both heads are super clean. I couldn't be happier. Next I want to pull the pan and inspect the rod and main bearings and see how they have done. Oil analysis says they are fine, or at least not bad.
Maybe regular oil all its life would have had the same results, but I have to believe that using quality oil, and employing superior filtering is the reason this engine looks like it has about 5000 miles on it and not 180,000 miles over 17 years.
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