Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

Just a quick story and a question. Recently had a set of standard GTR turbo's steel wheeled and highmounted on my car and my mate changed the oil for me when I wasn't there (he used Penrite HPR 10/50). He had a 550Hp ball bearing Garret fail for no apparent reason, oil flow and pressure was good, with limited K's and no real on boost time cause it was still to be tuned fully, he had used the same oil in his car. He then borrowed a turbo off a local mechanic in the mean time to keep his car running. When I was in there this weekend he took the inlet pipe off the front of the turbo and noticed some excessive play and after pulling it out the bearings where shot but it wasn't blowing smoke, the turbo guy pulled it apart on Monday and the shaft was laquered and had allot of carbon build up. After talking to him he told him he was using penrite HPR and the turbo guy said to stick well clear of it as about 5 years ago he rebuilt allot of turbo's that had been using penrite oils, he said then it was due to a problem with the base oil they use and a lack of additives, but they are able to rebuild the turbo for him.

I ran my turbo's for 3 weeks till i noticed some smoke from the back, got the turbo's inspected and one had failed, scoring the thrust seal and shaft, dont know why this happened as oil pressure and flow is good. I had it fixed and put in what I thought was a good oil Penrite HPR 10/50, ran the turbos for approx 10'ks (4 trips for my wife to the shops and back) and noticed white smoke again. after pulling it all apart again it the other turbine has failed and after talking to the the Turbo guy again he found out what oil I used and gave me the same helpful information, Stick well clear of Penrite HPR. Apparently it crystalzes in the bearing housing of the turbo, laquers the shaft and causes carbon to build up ruins the bearings causing the seal to wear and let oil past, and all this very quickly.

Sorry about the length of my story but now for my question has anyone had this problem or heard of others with it. And he recommended using Castrol GTX3 with some morries oil additive.

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/66729-penrite-oils-anyone-else-had-dramas/
Share on other sites

  • Replies 43
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

i used penrite in my R34 one run down the track and it was coughing and farting streight away did an oil change all ran smothly from there on in i use shell helix if it's good enough for ferrari's it's good enough for a GTR as for penrite i will never touch the stuff again!

:confused:

I didnt blame the oil as there was plenty else going on which i can attribute the problem too, but a mechanic put this Penrite fluff in my car, and 12 hours later when at Phillip Island the engine spun a bottom end bearing:( The car had an ignition miss at high rpm and a dented sump, i thought these two things were the main cause fo the bearing failure:(

I thought Castrol Formula R was going into my engine as thats what i asked for, and for the next 6 months used, though i have just switched back to my old faithful Mobil 1:)

One thing, if your running plain bearing turbos on what was once a ball bearing turbo'd car, make sure you arent using the same oil lines. Ball bearing turbos have restrictors in their oil lines, somehitng you dont want anywhere near your plain bearing turbos.

But with GTRs beign plain bearing turbos (except R34), and you mentioning that they were high mounted then im gussing they hae new oil lines to suit so that wont have been the problem.

Bugger, good luck with it all

I have also heard horror storied about penrite hpr oils.

also hot fours did a test years ago about what the best oil and i think penrite came in LAST place competing with the others

Royal Purple came in first for engine protection

I have been using Motul turbolite 4100 for the last 30,000 kms and its the best value for money while still offering excellent performance. Even after seeing a drift day and high stress/tempuratures it performs very well.

and it smells nice too :wassup:

I have used penrite in my silvias and it seemed good but i ran the gtr on motul or fuschs.

As a side note the shell helix you buy off the shelf is not the same as used by ferraris and neither is the mobil 1, the stuff off the shelf isnt a proper esther based sythetic thus it isnt the same sh1t!!!!

I ran some castrol on a recommendation (was using Motul) and I cooked it.  Now back to Turbolight with no dramas at all.

how did you cook it? which castrol?

I use forumla R 10w60 same as a lot of other other well looked after GTR's

I can see this turning into another 30page thread on oils...sadly full of misinformation:)

I talk to workshops and they sprout crap/truth to me about this and that. I talk to a Mobil distributer and your right, the oil on the shelf isnt the same as used by McLaren or HRT etcThey use Mobil 1 but a motorpsort grade which is a differetn weight. The oil you need for a road car needs to offer a different type of protection over a quite dramatic / different range of operation.

Statement should read Mobil 1 off the shelf is the oil they use in cars like McLaren/Merecedes SLR, Porsche GT2/996 Twin Turbo etc etc. Another similar grade of Mobil1 is used by McLaren F1 cars etc etc. The fact that Porsche and Mercedes use it is good enough for me, plus it served me well for 100,000kms of thrashing around:)

One thing i should add, since i am not able to get the heavire grade of Mobil 1 anywhere in Victoria, ill be running the Castrol Formula R 10W60, just to make sure that at the slightly higher then std power and high track temps, everything is going to hold together

LOL......and that is just another story from yet another person who cannot state anything for fact:(

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • Here is the mess that I made. That filler there was successful in filling dents in that area. But in the middle area. I can feel dents. And I've gone ocer it multiple times with filler. And the filler is no longer there because i accidently sanded it away. I've chased my tail on this job but this is something else lol. So I'm gonna attempt filler one more time and if it doesn't work I'll just high fill primer the door and see where the issues are because guidecoat is of no use atm.
    • Ok, so I think I sort of figured out where I went wrong. So I definitely overthinked it, and I over sanded, which is probably a large part of the problem. to fix it, I ended up tapping some spots that were likely to be high, made them low, filled them in, and I tackled small sections at a time, and it feels a lot better.    I think what confused me as well is you have the bare metal, and some spots darker and some are lighter, and when I run my finger across it, it' would feel like it's a low spot, but I think it's just a transition in different texture from metal to body filler.    When your finger's sliding on the body filler, and crosses over to the bare metal, going back and forth, it feels like it's a low spot. So I kept putting filler there and sanding, but I think it was just a transition in texture, nothing to do with the low or high spot. But the panel's feels a lot better, and I'm just going to end up priming it, and then I'll block it after with guide coat.   Ended up wasting just about all of my filler on this damn door lol  
    • -10 is plenty for running to an oil cooler. When you look at oil feeds, like power steering feeds, they're much smaller, and then just a larger hose size to move volume in less pressure. No need for -12. Even on the race cars, like Duncans, and endurance cars, most of them are all running -10 and everything works perfectly fine, temps are under control, and there's no restrictions.
    • Update: O2 sensor in my downpipe turned out to be faulty when I plugged in to the Haltech software. Was getting a "open circuit" warning. Tons of carbon buildup on it, probably from when I was running rich for a while before getting it corrected. Replaced with new unit and test drove again. The shuffle still happens, albeit far less now. I am not able to replicate it as reliably and it no longer happens at the same RPM levels as before. The only time I was able to hear it was in 5th going uphill and another time in 5th where there was no noticeable incline but applying more throttle first sped it up and then cleared it. Then once in 4th when I slightly lifted the throttle going over a bump but cleared right after. My understanding is that with the O2 sensor out, the ECU relies entirely on the MAP tune and isn't able to make its small adjustments based on the sensors reading. All in all, a big improvement, though not the silver bullet. Will try validating the actuators are set up correctly, and potentially setting up shop time to tune the boost controller on closed loop rather than the open loop it is set to now. Think if it's set up on closed loop to take the O2 reading, that should deal with these last bits. Will try to update again as I go. 
    • More so GReddy oil relocation kits, sandwich plates, etc. all use 10AN fittings. And same, I've only used 10AN and my car sees track work (circuit, doing laps, not 10 sec squirt business).
×
×
  • Create New...