a recent motor oil wear test

[rcodecj]

There's some interesting information in this fairly recent post.  This guy has done a lot of oil testing.
I found it interesting that he states 220 to 250 degrees for ideal oil temperature.
I have my oil temperature sending unit in my oil pan and my oil temp doesn't get that hot, at least I don't think it does. It's been a while since I've driven the car so maybe I'm not remembering correctly.

http://speedtalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=31363&sid=379032f5c531b8c6e3d7cc4f571dc268

[machoneman]

Some good data for sure.  I've always thought that:

-many hot rods actually run oil that is too cool. I've taken to running a 180 stat and rarely hit even 195 on hot days. Likely my oil is only at 210- 220 at a maximum. But, with today's 10% ethanol  laced gas which does have a lower vapor pressure, I'm more concerned with getting vapor lock (carb'ed btw) and a stall.   A old rule of thumb I've heard is that oil is usually about 30 degrees hotter than your coolant temp and some folks with oil pan gauges have borne this out.
-on the high end, few street rides and even drag race rides will ever hit maximum and over temperatures. Most streeters would badly overheat the coolant, encounter vapor lock, etc. long before the oil would start to degrade. 
-in today's world with roller tappets and roller followers/rockers, low drag thin piston rings, etc. the type of oil matters less than before. Sure, one should run the correct viscosity but the additive packages all seem to be very close to one another and the extreme closeness of the test results  seem to bear this out. 'Course if one runs a flat tappet cam today you're at high risk of failure due to low ZDDP oil and/or the lack of other phosphates than minimize swiping wear.

[jayb]

My oil temps don't get that hot either, at least as measured by the gauge, but my guess is there are hot spots in certain engine areas where the oil temperature does go higher; there's just no gauge to read it there.  If that wasn't the case, normal condensation in the engine would result in that brown foamy stuff under the valve covers.  I will sometimes see that after starting the engine for a brief period and then pulling the covers, but if left to run up to operating temperature, next time the covers are pulled it is gone.

That's very interesting information in that post, but I wish he would have given more details on exactly how he performed the test.  Is that available in an older post somewhere? 

[rcodecj]

A little more info on how he tested:

http://speedtalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30596&p=362282#p362282

If you search 540 RAT he has a lot of different tests.

http://speedtalk.com/forum/search.php?keywords=&terms=all&author=540+rat&sc=1&sf=all&sr=posts&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search

[Qikbbstang]

additives.  I'd recently had my Pick-Up totaled and picked up a clean looking F150 w/ what must have been several hundered thousand miles. Personally I am leery of any over the counter oil additives having worked closely with Mobil and Chevron Engineers on Paper Machine and Turbine Oils concerned about my filters removing their additive packages. I spoke with them a lot about automtive oils and they really convinced me on the Syn.  Oil engineering is an art, Ive seen the results when an oil company goofs up a batch and the additive package starts dropping out/clogging filters. I compare it to two ladies making cakes - exact same ingredients two widely varried endings.
Anyway The trucks motor sounded like: symphoney for the devil, I poured Power Up in and like magic the mechanical noises dropped to about 1/4 of the volume, ditto on the power steering pump and auto trans. I've heard rumors some mystery additives contain chlorides (put some bleach on your finger and feel how slick it is) .
   The guy I knew that sold the oil additives had a fancy dan tester that used ball bearings and a lever that could be weighted. Needless to say regular motor oils would fail (smoking scored bearings) at a fraction of what the additive enriched same oil would take.  Somehow I don't put all that much weight into the typical lube oil "bearing test" because I've seen a tiny bit of an additive make an enourmous change where you watched in amazement how much additional weight could be loaded on before failure.  All the alarms went off in my head on the old if it's to good to be true it likely is.  Plenty of room for snake oil in oil testing and I don't have a clue how.