Modern oils are also much better than the oils of 1960.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

Good point. Oils are the single biggest improvement in engine life IMO.

My 225 had 132K miles on it over 50 years. The oil pan was appalling...the oil pickup was completely covered in a crud so hard that I hesitate to call it sludge. The pickup was similarly full and the oil was making its way through a hole about 1/4" diameter.

I found, when I inspected the head, that the rocker shaft oiling hole in the head had never been drilled properly. It looks like the drill didn't break through all the way, and as a result about 60% of the hole was blocked.

Even with all that, the engine was running and driving until the PO ran over a trailer receiver hitch and knocked a hole in the oil pan.

The point being...these engines are very forgiving when it comes to oil, at least in 'normal' service.

Today I drained the break-in oil out of the 225 for its first oil change. Since the filter was off anyway, I decided to convert from the modern 'no-tube' oil fitting to the old fitting that had the tube to see what difference it would make. Although the oil pressure (with no tube) comes up quickly normally, I did let the car sit for about 3 weeks and I noticed the oil pressure did take about 2 seconds to come up.

I was surprised to see, upon peering down the tube, that the hole is so small. I didn't measure it exactly but a 5/16" rod would not pass through it. What's more....for some reason it's apparent the factory purposely did this as they swaged-down the tube. WTF.... It doesn't make much sense to massage all the oil passages in the block and pump if you neck it down anyway.

So I removed the tube, which came out very easily (?).

I made a new tube out of aluminum since I woulda had to wait a couple days for a piece of SS tube. I made the ID .450" which is much bigger than the factory tube but still a little smaller than the 1/2" modern fitting. I cranked up the engine but didn't drive it yet.