Best oil and best petrol

What is the best oil for my 1300 and what's the petrol (mix) to use?

Dan 🙂

castrol gtx2

Castrol GTX 2 is recommended and used by many vee dub owners...

Petrol is Unleaded or Premium unleaded...
91 RON is what is needed.. and thats Unleaded standard..
I am going to add 25% premium unleaded in My Beetle..

Lee

Hey Danny,

Just do not use a fully synthetic oil as it rejects heat, and our little engines need the oil to help transport heat from the heads etc...

Matt

Whats this about putting 2 stroke oil in your tank?

Dan🙂

it lubes the valve and prevents valve resesion into the head. the best is flash lube which can be purchased from repco and other places. it is an auto feeding system that is hooked into the manifold and 1litre treats 1000 km and 1000 litres of fuel. i ran this in my 72 sbug with a 2 litre on premium unleaded and had no problems :alien

Fact not opinion.

I know a guy who fitted a Fuelstar inline tin cannister to his old Holden motor which was in good condition and had the head off and inspected before the cannister was fitted. There was no valve seat recession evident. No hardened valve seats were fitted, just the standard cast iron head. It was run on unleaded with no other additives.

After 5 years and 100,000 km's the motor was runing rough and the valves could not be adjusted any more. The head was removed and the exhaust valves had buried themselves up to 2mm into the head. One looked even more than that.

yeah seen that had a 1700 in the bug before the 2litre and it dropped a piston because of the lead replacement fuel does not have a high enough octaine rating.but flash lube has a life time guarantee on it for any damage to the moter if fitted correct and no other additive is used in its system, and at $75-100 dollars a kit and a fair bit less for refills its worth it.

I used to add a small amount of 2-stroke as upper cylinder lubricant for years, but if you do that it should be the marine type 2-stroke oil ,
I now use flashlube & standard unleaded

have you found that it has a slight power increase or it runs smoother as well when running on the flash lube.

barls wrote:yeah seen that had a 1700 in the bug before the 2litre and it dropped a piston because of the lead replacement fuel does not have a high enough octaine rating.

Ahhh..... dont think so dude.

LRP is actually premium unleaded (PULP) with potassium compounds and god knows what else added as a valve seat cushion so the octane rating is well in excees of what anything up to about 10:1 CR will exploit.

This is why LRP is so pricey.

boof2332 wrote:Hey Danny,

Just do not use a fully synthetic oil as it rejects heat, and our little engines need the oil to help transport heat from the heads etc...

Matt

Sorry dude but this is incorrect. The opposite is true.

barls wrote:have you found that it has a slight power increase or it runs smoother as well when running on the flash lube.

no Flash Lube simply protects valve seats etc

it was originally developed many years ago for vehicles using LPG , which is a dry fuel, as an upper cylinder lubricant fed into manifold by drip feed/vacuum , when they did away with leaded fuel it really became useful across the board, my '64 Humber with non hardened valve seats has done about 80.000ks, much of it high speed, since it's last tank of leaded fuel , using standard unleaded & 1ml per litre flash lube . I just put 60ml in the tank each time I fill up

IVE HEARD THAT LRP IS JUST STANDARD UNLEADED WITH A FEW THINGS ADDED I HAVE RUN PREMIUM SINCE I BUILD MY MOTOR AND IT RUNS GREAT I ALSO PUT SOME FLASHLUBE IN WHEN I REMEMBER I RUN PENRITE HPR 50 IN MINE NICE THICK OIL I DONT LIKE THIN OIL IN MY VWS I THINK THAT THIN OIL SHITS ITSELF QUICK WHEN IT GETS HOT SO WHY WOULD YOU PUT IT IN A AIRCOOLER MABY FOR RACING WHEN THE MOTOR ONLY HAS TO MAKE IT A RACE TO GET EVERY BIT OF POWER OUT OF THEM 😎

hmm I use HPR 5 , wonderfully thin
Flash lube is residual, doesnt matter one bit if you miss a few tankfuls, Kombi usuallonly gets it now if I am doing a trip

no sorry mate it you thats wrong. the ron(octaine rating) of LRP is 93 unleaded is 92 and pulp is 96-98. the 1700 dropped a piston because it was pinging due to low octaine rating. the story behind the problem was that super was 94-96 ron fuel and when they changed it over to LRP the octaine rating dropped and the anti knock additives were changed and reduced. i was not alone with this problem as most of the people around at the time had this problem in two different states ie vic and nsw. ask your local mechanic if you dont believe me. because ive still got the piston to prove it.

Hasn't the whole synthetic oil debate been resolved? Synthetic oil is better in the long run, it doesn't thermally degrade as quickly as mineral oil I don't think there is any arguement there. But in our VW engines with no oil filter where the oil change interval is only 3000km, the oil is stuffed by impurities long before it thermally degrades or oxidises. Besides, who can afford to pay $25 for each oil change? The point is that it isn't worth the extra cash in this application.

As for synthetic oil "rejecting heat", WTF does that mean? Syn oil may be more heat resistant, meaning that it doesn't break down not that it doesn't absorb heat.

The final reason I don't use it is that all the syn oils I've seen are 5W or 10W, which seems a bit thin for an old engine with loose tolerances. Oil this thin in my engine would probably leak 2.5L before it was time to change it.

Mudbasher, Penrite HPR50 is a 40W-70 oil, it's very thick. It's specifically designed for old large capacity motors which are leaking oil, speedway competition or towing in the outback! Shit mate the stuff is practically solid. One good reason to use a thinner oil is that 75% of wear occurs during the first 5-10min after start up (sounds like an ad). Your Penrite HPR 50 probably stays in the sump for about 30min until it's hot enough to crawl out. Change to Penrite HPR30 it's a 20W-60, if you think GTX2 is too thin. I wasn't aware that lower viscosity oils degraded any faster.

i run a mulivis which is 30w55 which is recomended for most cars at that age and younger.

So i'll go for the GTX2 and some flash lube in with normal unleaded. Yea?

Dan

yeah most of the oils are the same so it just marketing hype but stay away from the ones in the supermarkets and such.

I personally prefer polunsaturated oils. 🙂

We use Penrite HPR30 in all the vehicles & bikes
EH Holden
'75 1800 Microbus
'70 1300 Beetle
'77 Honda CBR750
'84 Honda CM250

Seems to suit all of them pretty well seeing as they are all older style motors. I change the oil very regulary and to make it easier I get the oil in a 20 litre drum.

Petrol is a bit different.
We use Premium in all vehicles/ bikes except the EH is LPG and the Beetle cops any shit.

I run Penrite Desiel I think it is similar to the HPR 30 in specs ( have to check, juts always walk in and get it :o) I believe it has more detergents and similar additives, which may help with no filters on a standard engine. I just run straight PULP and the engine is fine. no flash lube or anything, as I thought all vw engines cam with hardened valve seats?

The Beetle engine is very resistant to any old crap. Petrol in the 40's was very variable in quality. Our petrol is much more consistent.

Unleaded petrol

http://www-static.shell.com/static/au-en/downloads/fuels/tds/shell_unleaded_pet_tds.pdf

91 RON
< 100 ppm sulfur content


PULP

(hard to find unless you're in the country)
95 RON
< 150 ppm sulfur content

LRP

http://www-static.shell.com/static/au-en/downloads/fuels/tds/shell_lead_repl_pet_tds.pdf

"Lead Replacement contains a pre-mixed additive that protects your engine the same way lead does, without the harmful lead compounds. The additive Shell uses is Valvemaster which protects wearing on the soft valve seats of older cars (pre-1986). Post-1986 cars have hardened valve seats and do not need leaded petrol."

96.3 RON
< 150 ppm sulfur content

Optimax / BP Ultimate / Mobil 8000

There's only a couple of refineries for this, and depending on your market, this fuel is identical no matter who you buy it through.

http://www-static.shell.com/static/au-en/downloads/fuels/tds/shell_optimax_tds.pdf

98 RON
< 150 ppm sulfur content

Personally, I run my Type 3 (when I run it) on Optimax.

On oils, mineral oils vs synthetic. The main difference is that synthetic oils simply do not break down and are very stable. And pricey. The oil as coolant argument also doesn't hold sway as the oil's thermal properties are very similar (compared say to another liquid such as paraffin). Get the correct viscosity for your engine, and you're okay. However with 3000 mile oil changes, there's simply not enough time for the average half-decent oil to crap itself.

Putting oil into the petrol tank is illegal as your engine will be emitting buckets of crap into the air and will fail emissions testing in every state (except Vic, which doesn't seem to have any).

Andrew

Barls

I AM a qualified mechanic and later on I also worked for a large metropolitan oil distributorship in Sydney as a tanker driver and later on as a products tech rep.

i think I have a fair idea of what is going on with regards to fuels makeup and oils.

I accept your retraction of what you posted earlier.

I suggest that you closely scrutinize and research for yourself what some "mechanics" are telling you.
they will often dazzle you in science rhetoric when they dont really know what is the problem.
A hell of a lot of them have no idea what they are waffling on about when it comes to fuels and oils.

L8tr
E

as an electronic technician specialising in hydraulics and pneumatic and more than 10 years working in the automotive industry before i became a technician, i think that i know what im talking about. most of what i'm talking about has been taught to me by my father who did his apprenticeship on vw more than 35 years ago(he's still going and is the main vw mechanic in the manning valley) and what i have found out for myself through reseach about fuels. i admit that im not a expert but i have a fair idea about vw and fuels:cussing

[quote
Unleaded petrol

http://www-static.shell.com/static/au-en/downloads/fuels/tds/shell_unleaded_pet_tds.pdf

91 RON
< 100 ppm sulfur content


PULP

(hard to find unless you're in the country)
95 RON
< 150 ppm sulfur content

LRP

http://www-static.shell.com/static/au-en/downloads/fuels/tds/shell_lead_repl_pet_tds.pdf

"Lead Replacement contains a pre-mixed additive that protects your engine the same way lead does, without the harmful lead compounds. The additive Shell uses is Valvemaster which protects wearing on the soft valve seats of older cars (pre-1986). Post-1986 cars have hardened valve seats and do not need leaded petrol."

96.3 RON
< 150 ppm sulfur content

Optimax / BP Ultimate / Mobil 8000

There's only a couple of refineries for this, and depending on your market, this fuel is identical no matter who you buy it through.

http://www-static.shell.com/static/au-en/downloads/fuels/tds/shell_optimax_tds.pdf

98 RON
< 150 ppm sulfur content

[/quote]
I suggest you re-read this. I know Vanderaj knows his stuff. After you re-read it and research it you will know your stuff too and so will your dad, all dude respect to him.

Hydraulics and pneumatics eh enginer? Good for you dude!
That ought to give you real head start in the chemical makeup and properties of the various petrols wont it!
Bwaaahahahahahahaha!!!
L8tr
E
:vader:vader:vader:vader:blah:jesus

still i prefer to run optimax or bp ultimate with flash lube and not run the risk of valve resession plus my bug seemed to run smoother on ether of these fuels. but thats my preference becuase of the consistency of the octaine rating as it varries greatly because there are many different rating that they use ie pump rating, tanker rating, refinery rating and no two of these are meassured the same. this is my final word on this as it comes down to personal choice.!!!!!

I use bp, as i am british, lol, nah i use any type as i live in tassie and is prob full off salt water from the bass tard straight, well as long as my vw runs i dont give a toss...

Andy

Hmmmm...Well, I have no experience in any of those fields but I do know what I have learned from experience.
I noticed that LRP was giving me worse fuel economy and less power. It also seemed to make the motors run hotter.

I run PULP in all my cars (optimax when I see it), and they seem to run okay, once I have tweaked the timing a little anyway. I put the flashlube in too.

I'm still wondering if it had anything to do with the dropped valve seat. My engine hasn't done a massive amount of kms since it was recon'd either.

As for oil, depending on the climate where I live, it varies, but I run 20w50 normally. and NOT Valvoline!!
I've seen that destroy engines. Usually the topend goes first. It's like the oil doesn't lubricate unless it's forcefed to the parts!

i use optimax and gtx2 now however originally used magnatec until someone from here suggested that i shoukdn't, funnilly enough my motor ran 2 deg cooler on magnatec. i do not use flashlube however i think i may in future cheers david

umm. ok. my car has had no oil change for at least 20,000km's. lets just say it was my bros car and he is not mechanically minded.

and also. are the 1600's able to run premium or even unleaded?

i run standard unleaded with flash lube or lead replacement fuel with no additive. i actually dont know what oil is in there ATM becuase the last oil change wasnt done by me however i will do an oil change before valla which will be GTX2.

so if u run unleaded you should run this flash lube stuff?

flash lube is just one brand of valve lube.......it replaces the extra lubricants that are in lead replacement petrol so u can run unleaded through your engine......i dont know if it helps alot but i use it.

havent read all the posts but we need to know, VW"S HAVE HARDENED VALVE SEATS< THEY DO NOT NEED THE LUBE >>>> DO THE READING IN PREV POSTS AND DONT WASTE UR HARD EARNED CASH

anyhoo.... post on hehe

Adam_C wrote:havent read all the posts but we need to know, VW"S HAVE HARDENED VALVE SEATS< THEY DO NOT NEED THE LUBE >>>> DO THE READING IN PREV POSTS AND DONT WASTE UR HARD EARNED CASH

anyhoo.... post on hehe

not all vw have hardened valve seats only the ones that have ether new performance heads or heads that have been converted to unleaded. cause the original style valve guides were softer due to the lubricating effects of lead in the fuel. with the new fuels lead has been replaced by ethyl benzine which does not lube valve seat and shafts

I run a 96 octane gas with no additive and 32 degrees total advance with 9:1 compression. Never had any pinging. I have never run any additive in any VW engine, and never had a valve recession problem.

As for oil - my understanding is all the additives that modify an oil to make it multigrade break down pretty quick, so you may as well buy a standard 30 weight oil and call it quits. Put the money into something else - like beer.

AdrianH wrote:As for oil - my understanding is all the additives that modify an oil to make it multigrade break down pretty quick, so you may as well buy a standard 30 weight oil and call it quits. Put the money into something else - like beer.

W T F?????????
Go figure..............

heres a link with a few links off it !!!

http://www.oceanstreetvideo.com/vwtech/oil.htm

Might be all bullshit - make up your own mind I guess...

M8
Youll find that many of those dudes are just dazzling themselves in science.
VW's are just not rocket science. With such low specific power outputs and low rpm's the damned things will happily run on about anything that feels oily.
There is so much verbal diahorrea regarding oils for VW's as to what one particular dude reckons is better than an other and some almost preposterous claims made by some dudes as to what may or may not happen if you run some fancy jungle juice or other. I find it laughable when some oil is the next great thing and "my engine runs smoother, starts easier, gets better fuel economy and bloodywell detonates a whole lot less than before"........bah!
These claims are often based on recollections and anecdotes from their mates who"had a ""mate"" that knew some bloke that ran some fancy multi-vis, ipso-facto, chechomahoota minus 10w-330 oil in his engine and the engine simply disintegrated in a puff of logic".
Usually heresay and the bulk of the failures attributed to lubrication (or lack of it) may well be traced to a big end cap bolt failure or some other far less sinister metalurgical failure.
gawd, i remember when I bought my first bevel-drive Ducati Vee-twin.
All the nay-sayer came out of the woodwork with the tiresome and repetitive accounts of one of these mysterious "mates" who "had a mate" who spent more time pushing his Ducati than riding it due to, big end failures every six months or electrical gremlins in the old italian electrics...........................
When quizzed more closely, these said "mates" can never be found, if they ever existed and indeed most of them had never even had a mate that owned a Ducati......
All of it is bullshit and the failures are almost always a result of bad or non-existent maintenance.

Give
Me
A
Break!

Anyway, Im going to have a bex and a good lie down now!
L8tr
E

Hey Tassupervee,

I am no expert on oil or petrol and only try and make educated decisions on what I read. The comment I made earlier about the synthetic oil rejecting heat was firstly from an article on 4 dyno tested 2000cc+ aircooled engines. All of their head temps went up with the use of synthetic oil. I then read this ......

Gene Berg enterprises

Online Parts Catalog

Oil

OIL10-ND Non detergent 10 weight for break-in of new engines in cold weather.


OIL20-ND Non detergent 20 weight for break-in of new engines in normal weather


OILR25W50 25W50 Pennzoil GT performance racing oil


OIL10/30 Detergent multi grade 10-30 weight


OIL10/30 TORCO Torco multi grade 10-30 weight


OILR/30 Racing 30 weight


OILR/40 Racing 40 weight


OIL-GR Gear oil 85/90 weight


OILM-GR Synthetic gear oil 75/90 weight.


Note 1: Synthetic gear oil will provide the best fuel mileage, smoothest shifting and longest life. For all standard transaxles. Do not use with a ZF limited slip.


Note 2: We do not sell or use synthetic engine oil for the air-cooled VW as it rejects heat. The air cooled VW depends on the oil to soak up the heat from the head and carry it back to the oil cooler. With the synthetic oil the head temperature goes up and the oil temperature went down.

I am doing some testing on a new development in the synthetic engine oil that is advertised to pick up heat from the oil and take it to the cooler without viscosity break down. I will let you know in the future if it lives up to its claims.

Top of Page


PARTS & ACCESSORIES | TECH TIPS | ABOUT GENE BERG
DEE BERG TOYS | MEET OUR TEAM | HOME

NEW PRODUCTS | PHOTO ALBUM | OLD STICKERS

GENE BERG ENTERPRISES
1725 North Lime Street
Orange, California 92865

The 2332 will be finished very soon...I guess I will have to try for myself.

Matt

Dude
Be assured I was not pointing the acid tongue at you or any other dude on this forum, generally just some of the claims and stuff I have read ( and laughed out loud at) over the years regarding oils and fuels, and not just on this forum.
The "rejecting heat" claim is a very curious one as this flies in the face of the very properties of nearly any decent, FULL synthetic oils.
Remember, that up until relatively recently, many so-called "Synthetic" oils were not full synthetic at all. Just blends of minerasl oils with synthetic compounds/polimers/molecules/atomic paticles :blah added.
Mobil 1 was one of these despite the claims of being a "Full Synthetic"
How they were getting around this blatant mis-representation is beyond me but probably runs along the same preposterous lines as the old "Made in Australia' & "Product of Australia" both which qualify for the green triangle and both infer being australian made but in fact are not even closely related......other than available in Australia..............go figure

Again, the science of tuning a kraut is not a rocket one. Low specific power output, low RPMs and low bearing loads. Compare a kraut to any of the air-cooled Nipponeeze big inch bikes of a few years ago. These things were producing around 130 Hp/litre (some more, some less) at 12000rpm and well beyond and seemed to survive for many tens of thousands of kilometers on anything from straight 30 weight deisel oil right thru to the very best synthetic stuff from Redline and Amsoil.

These things are asked to perform in a hideous environment of varying airflows over/around the engine, hidden away under a blanket of fibreglass rather than having the luxury of fan forced cooling and survive well enough on whatever happens to be put in them.

So, the moral is for most of us not to get too bent out of shape over the (supposed/claimed) quality of a given oil and its supposed heat rejecting properties (I notice that the article did not quote what oil it was actually running) How old is the article?

Anyways, good luck with your new toy.
L8tr
E

FWIW Im using GTX Protec - because I like the name. - No problems at all...

Its all cool........

NOW ....WHICH OIL DID WE DECIDE ON AFTER ALL THAT?????

Matt

GTX 2:bounce

If it burns it goes in my tank. If it's slippery it goes down the oil filler.

What's this about VW's having hardened valve seats? I was (i'm no expert here) under the impression that they didn't have them and a additive was needed. I've been using flashlube for more than 2 years had no problems.

I'm not trusting the people who put the seats in my heads to have put a specifically hardened metal in there. they could be cheapies... they could be kickass titanium or summin..how do you really know? one way to find out is not to use an additive that costs about 12 bucks for every 500litres of fuel you use. but that could work out realll spensive, so I'm sticking to flashlube. don't use valve seat protection, by all means, but check your clearances every so often and watch for the telltale signs. for those of use running dual valve springs and even triple valve springs I'd think it would be a good idea too. flashlube. mmmm. tasty.

Boozer wrote:If it burns it goes in my tank. If it's slippery it goes down the oil filler.

Bwaaahaha a man after my own heart.

A point to ponder is that flashlube and other lead substututes are not there to lube valve guides and other parts but purely as a cushion or shock absorber between the valve face/seat.

Sadly, spring loaded poppett valves dont close with a neat single click as we would imagine (hope for (dream about)) but with a nasty, uncontrolled and ever decreasing buzzing consisting of a multitude of tiny openings and closings.
This nastiness can be (sort of) demonstrated by gently bringing the faces of two hammers together.
(Dont do this hard tho children as hardened hammer heads have been known to shatter when hit against each other hard enough)......

These nasty and uncontrolled repetitive closings result in high wear rates and the dreaded valve recession, not to mention in extreme cases removing the heads off valves, collet and retainer failure, broken springs and so on.

This fun and games is a result of the combined harmonic properties of the valve spring and the valve train components.

A very common way to deal with these harmonics is to employ double or even triple valve springs as the different resonant frequencies of the different springs, combined with the other valve train components act agains one another effectively cancelling/reducing/eliminating this destructive bouncing of the valve on closing.

The seating pressure of the valve is but one condition that affects valve seat wear and what will really do the job on valve train goodies is destructive valve bouncing and badly profiled closing ramps on cams resulting in the valve slamming shut.

All that mega seating pressure and multiple springs clobber will actually prolong seat/valve faces, rather than contribute to seat recession.

Seating pressure alone has little to do with valve control and springs can be wound in a variety of linear and progressive tensions and simply upping the seating pressure may not control a valve at high lift.

As a matter of interest, in F-Vee, some guys are using springs seated at as little as 55Lb seating pressure and controlling the valve at up to 6500rpm. Mind you this is on a stock camshaft.
I personally use 65-68 Lb seating pressure on box stock springs and my engine will happily run to 6200rpm
Pandy's F-Vee will top 6500rpm with the same seating pressure.
Everything sure changes when very aggressive cam profiles are used but the basic rules apply right across the board.

Happy oiling.......FWIW I use Castrol Synthetic 0w30 in the F-Vee as it is cheap and available everywhere. I change it twice a year.

L8tr
E

Thanks Mr Supervee 😀 all good info...

hehehehe cewl dude!
L8tr
E

Come on people everyone has ther own opinion, one says this one says that.. at the end of the day we drive volksies and as much as we all love them they leak the oil right back out on our nice driveways and shed floors... they dont call them oildrippers for nothing hehee..........at the end of the day as long as it runs and gets us where we want to go it works... Myself i add a small amout of castrol tts 2 stroke bike oil into my tank.. why?? well i use it on my motorcrosser and i always have some fuel left over from a days racing so it goes in the beetle :P:thumb:P



steff.........................................

Yeah theres nothing wrong with a bit of 2 stroke oil mine gets a bit of motul 800 mix after each ride