The mysterious illness striking down old cars | Hacker News Reader

The mysterious illness striking down old cars

economist.com

62 pointsCaptainZapp27 comments

Don't take advice on your high-performance, flat tappet camshaft break-in from the Economist anymore than you'd take global economic advice from Car and Driver.

Cam break-in on flat tappet systems is not a mysterious process. Use the right assembly lube, fire the engine and don't let it idle but instead run it up to 2500 RPMs and vary the RPMs for the first 15 minutes, and if you're anal (or the flat-tappet engine is in an aircraft), cut open and inspect the oil filter media at the oil change.

Implying that a poorly made or improperly broken in camshaft is failing in 300 miles because of new oil additive packages makes me question why the Economist is publishing poor articles on fringe motoring topics. Improper assembly, pre-lube or engine start of fresh rebuilds has been wiping cam lobes for 6+ decades now.

PS: For infrequently used engines with flat tappet, splash-oiled cams, use CamGuard: http://www.aslcamguard.com/ It's not cheap ($26 a pint or so), but it's well regarded in the piston aircraft world (where light airplanes frequently sit for weeks at a time, unlike your daily driver, but very much like your occassional usage of a 60s Mustang).

It never ceases to amaze me the absolute depth of knowledge available on HN.

The economist is publishing articles blaming 'the greenies' for your car failing by banning toxic metals in your oil.

It's a standard economist article - they are basically just fox news with a higher reading age.

"It's a standard economist article - they are basically just fox news with a higher reading age."

Are you implying that the Economist is a right wing propaganda rag?

Actually it's an economically very liberal magazine and _extremely_ liberal on social issues.

And for hating greens? They published a special report on forests a couple weeks ago, which could have come straight from the WWF.

It seems you're quite prejudiced here, without really being informed.

The Economist is certainly not "Fox News with a higher reading age". Name me one other publication covering: business and politics. They have decent quarterly summary supplements on technology and good weekly science sections.

They have a bias in both their writing and their world view, but so does any publication, including HN. As long as you understand the bias then you shouldn't be led astray too far. There are of course articles which don't reach their average quality, but the quality is generally quite high. Higher than any other news and analysis publication I know of which is published every week.

Edit: grammar

And they don't pretend they have don't a bias. They often express an opinion, but its always clear that it's an opinion. "Balanced" reporting has never existed, but the crazy practice of pretending it does is disappearing in this age of Fox news and the internet. (Is this the only good thing that's come out of Fox news?)

Add to that that it's one of the rare publications willing to admit mistakes in judgment

One of the more recent examples is the Iraq war, which they supported. They don't deny that they did that, but think it was a mistake in hindsight. Note that this is quite different then hanging the flag into the direction of the wind of public opinion.

Opinion journalism? Hell yes, and they'd probably be the first to admit this.

There are areas where I very much disagree with their opinion. This is not only to be expected, but it's actually quite rewarding for the reader.

See, reading a well reasoned and researched opinion, which differs fundamentally from my own, actually makes me think through such reasoning and it helps to achieve a world view, which has far more shades of gray then black & white.

[edited, typo]

> Don't take advice on your high-performance, flat tappet camshaft break-in from the Economist...

But do take heed of their admonition to understand precisely what you are putting into your vintage engines. I frequent a vintage motorcycle list and the discussions regarding additive packages and ZDDP specifically are frequent.

The consensus there is that ZDDP is the most important factor in engine longevity.

Absolutely right. I built several flat tappet engines years ago and the failure is because people don't break them in and take care of them.

Many people who are newly interested in classic cars are under the impression that they can treat them like modern cars after a restoration. Unless you've spent the money to update the internals, you need to follow the tried and true practices of the past.

Though that impression quickly changes as soon as things as simple as starting it can be a problem. Though my experience may be colored by too much Lucas Electric in my life.

From someone in the oil and oil additive business I can say that this article is actually pretty accurate compared to most of the crap out there.

However, ZDDP is an anti-wear additive not an extreme pressure additive. In the article it says, "camshafts exert pressures in excess of 200,000lb per square inch" which means you need an extreme pressure agent.

While ZDDP is effective, it does cause catalytic converter problems in vehicles made after 2006 (since they switched the metal in them), so don't run out and put this in your new cars.

Mark, www.sfrcorp.com

You left off the brilliant conversion to metric - "200,000lb per square inch (14,000 kg/cm²)"

This commenter gets annoyed by authors who write about themselves in the third person. This comment writer suspects the article's author thinks he makes himself sound less ignorant when he writes in the third person. Maybe the economist's editorial guidelines demand pieces light on content (or facts to backup the premise) be written this way to distract the reader; thinks this comment writer.

It's a style enforced by the magazine. Probably seems better to them than the "royal we". Certainly better than the repetitive use of "I" favored by some. Kind of interesting how English forces us to deal with this issue all the time.

> Kind of interesting how English forces us to deal with this issue all the time.

How do other languages handle it?

I don't know. But I think they force you to deal with other issues. For example, in Hawaiian, the grammar for possessive pronouns forces you to indicate whether an object has a permanent or temporary relationship to the subject. In Japan they have different number systems for different kinds of things. Something like we have for a gaggle of geese, a pride of lions etc.

The Economist has a particular and well-known style guide that all writing for the publication must follow, be it for the online version (like this piece) or otherwise - and as others have pointed out, one of their styles is using the third person and "this/your correspondent" as opposed to the first person. Similarly, they don't put author by-lines on their magazine pieces (and only initials on their online ones), although die-hard Economist fans can often recognize individual authors by their phrasing and subject matter.

If you're interested in more of their particular quirks of style - or want to see how well-specified the writing style is for a major magazine - most of their guide is available online at http://www.economist.com/research/styleguide/.

Wow, I was being a bit toungue-in-cheek about it as I don't read much Economist (when I do the author is rarely stating their opinion, I tend to prefer more factual/reporting pieces from them), but thats interesting. Learn something new every day it seems!

I also have found some success in trying to avoid pronouns when writing. It can lead to weird phrasings where one's opinion is stated as a fact but a majority don't seem to care much about that (pedants are in a minority). See!

They also have a language blog [1] which often expounds on some of the details and consequences of their and others' style guides.

[1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson

Thanks for pointing that out. I think that blog will get added to my regular reading, I like to geek out on language (programming languages mostly, but English too).

This commenter hypothesizes that such a writing style is closer to passive-voice, and thus less likely to be offending or refuted, because it is easier to make less absolutist claims. Ideal for news sources, unless the reader desires useful information.

Actually it has to do with the fact that the newspaper doesn't sport bylines on their articles.

In blog entries they use initials since a variety of writers write for the blogs and to avoid confusion. Special reports have bylines too. While there may be contributing authors for a report it's byline is by the author responsible. Some guest articles are also signed, for example if Tony Blair writes a piece. The final article with a byline is the farewell piece by an outgoing editor in chief. Alas, this is a rare event, since the newspaper (which actually insists on referring to itself as a newspaper) had 16 editors in chief since it's founding. That was in 1843.

The paper's point is that it's a product of all editors and should speak with the voice of the paper. Thus the "Your correspondent" moniker.

They certainly never shied away from opinion, or tried to cloak uncomfortable opinion in weasel words.

I am not sure why the economist is producing articles about flat tappet cam engines. It is well known that new engine oils contain lower amounts of ZDDP, it is known to harm catalytic converters. It is also not as necessary in roller engines (anything new).

Overall engine oils have gotten much better, but if you run a flat tappet cam most people use a break-in oil, or an additive like GM EOS. Or use a heavy duty engine oil (HDEO) like a diesel oil.

But really anyone who needs these things would not be reading the economist for advice about valve spring pressures wiping cam lobes. As another commenter mentioned, with a good assembly lube (lots of moly) and pre-lube the engine should be fine. Plus if you are running a flat tappet cam the design of the engine will allow you to easily pre-oil it via the distributer shaft.

But zddp additive or a racing/HDEO is a good idea for this type of engine.

The Economist publishes these articles for the same reason it ran an obituary on Martin Tytell[1]. It makes an interesting read, informs people about something they otherwise would never encounter and helps to broaden, however slightly people's mental models of the world.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Tytell

I suspect they publish it because the readership demographic of the Economist likely correlates highly to people in an economic position to buy vintage cars. They're just catering to their readership.

Be wary of the advice recommended by the article - it gets alot right, but it fails to mention that using a motorcycle specific oil inside of an engine has trade-offs. Motorcycle oils typically (depending on the type of motorcycle) do not have friction modifiers. This is because the clutch on many motorcycles is a wet-clutch, meaning it is bathed in engine oil. The nicer new oils have friction modifiers to make them more effective, which causes these clutches to slip. Hence, motorcycle oils don't have these additives.

Now, cars ran fine before the advent of friction modified oil additives, however they are definitely a good thing for the longevity of any engine. It's always a trade-off!

The author's views are consistent with those of the (air cooled) Porsche engine building community. Here in the US, Brad Penn 20W-50 and Valvoline VR-1 Racing 20W-50 have the necessary Zinc.

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