auntulna
Veteran Member
Heh! Heh! There's no crying in baseball, or in the diesel world either. And above all, no belittling! Geez Frank, c'mon.
Yes, but Franks thing is that he claims to have caught Kolben and AMC/Febi selling Chinese made cams in boxes labeled made in spain. Which is definitely probable from the pics he posted in the other thread. His comparison was from cams that are 6 years old though (not to say a company wouldn't lie twice).To the best of my knowledge all VW PD cams (or at least the 4 cylinder engine ones) are made by Estas in Turkey. AMC, Febi, Kolbenshmidt, and Colt all get their cams (or blanks) in billet from Estas. There may be some inexpensive cast cams available, but we haven't seen any of those for a while.
I don't think anyone is blaming Frank or his cams for anything...Ok lets deal with the real issue here, why blame Frank06 cams, we never had issues with alh cams in the past, this is a PD engine that brings this issue, and on top it is hard to predict if Frank sold you that cam, weather a member took care of oil changes on time and right oil spec as well, ,,
Peter (ID Parts) and Frank06 are guys that will sell you top quality parts, they have been around here at tdi forum since Christopher Columbus discovered this beloved Forum, i guarantee you guys that if they had been selling you ****ty parts in the past, they would not've survived the flaming that takes place at this forum, and they wouldnot've been in existence here any longer. They are both stand up guys.
Going forward with the topic, i never owned a PD but we all know the weakest link is the cam, so why is it that once you replace the cam wherever you got it from no member i have read so far, have done a WPC treatment on them, im sure that will heal some of the issues with it.
Blindly adding additives and not knowing the exact content of certain additives already in the oil you're using and not knowing exactly how much more you're adding to it with said additive is not a good thing. Zinc is great for engine break in and cam protection, but too much of it can be a bad thing, too, not to mention that some of the zinc additives may not blend and suspend correctly into some oils. There's a whole lot of variations on chemistry that can go on here.I don't think anyone is blaming Frank or his cams for anything...
My original post was simply to analyse the cost/performance ratio on these older TDIs in terms of whats available for cams currently, with as much accurate info that's available. If all the new cams are billet, they are all going to last a decent amount of time. So you either accept that the cams are 200k mile wear items in these (which isn't unheard of) or you try to milk it and spend the money to see how long franks or a colt will last (probably a good bit longer).
As for the WPC treatment are you talking about something like this?
https://www.idparts.com/liqui-moly-mos2-anti-friction-oil-additive-p-2353.html
Would you use this just during break in? I thought additives weren't recommended on TDIs.
Yeah I probably wouldn't use that stuff on its own in my car, for the exact reasons stated. Just was wondering if he had any experience with doing so.Blindly adding additives and not knowing the exact content of certain additives already in the oil you're using and not knowing exactly how much more you're adding to it with said additive is not a good thing. Zinc is great for engine break in and cam protection, but too much of it can be a bad thing, too, not to mention that some of the zinc additives may not blend and suspend correctly into some oils. There's a whole lot of variations on chemistry that can go on here.
To ensure consistent results, you're absolutely better off just buying an oil already formulated with the correct amount of zinc for the effect you're after. If you're just going for camshaft or engine break in, Driven/Joe Gibbs does have a diesel 15w40 break in oil, break in at 2000 RPM for 20 minutes. Change oil with more break in oil, run it for 500 miles, then change the oil again to what you would normally use in the car.
I've been trying Red Line because I've heard interesting stuff about the esters they blend into their basestock (I believe they're still mostly Group IV PAO with some group V esters blended) and their performance formulas have actually not been submitted to the API or any manufacturers for approval, most likely because it contains higher amounts of zinc and molybdenum (both excellent anti-wear additives) than the oils that do meet those specs. Modern oil specs continually lower the amounts of allowed zinc and moly out of concerns for poisoning catalytic converters, especially with newer direct injected gas engines that have the tendency to burn a LOT of oil.
Franko swears by Schaeffer's and I would believe him. I just find Red Line to be more convenient to find locally to me (helps that they're headquarted in the area), though pricey. But given that these engines are known to have an engineering flaw that causes these cams to wear out, I would say spending the extra money for an oil that is a step above average for wear protection isn't a bad thing, but with some of these cams (including OE) it is merely delaying the inevitable... and if you're still on your engine's original camshaft, it may already be worn and it just hasn't been inspected by someone who's familiar with what to look for without disassembling the whole thing.
As for the WPC treatment are you talking about something like this?