240 General: New (to me) 1980 Volvo 244

[Laird Scooby]

Thanks for the link and recommendation Alan, saved the twin-pack for £17.32 in my Watch list.

You're right about people using synthetic oils and then creating oil leaks, heard of it many times but those people generally won't have a word spoken against the oil they've paid for in limb proportions!

It's the same argument with tyres, yes there are some fantastic new tyres out there but fit them on something 20, 30 or even 40 years old and they'll wear strangely without providing the grip, economy, silence etc they are famed for on newer cars.

That's because the tyres and/or the cars are designed to take mutual advantage of characteristics in both to make the most of them. Best tyres i ever had on a 7xx Volvo were the Corsa tyres i fitted to my first 740GLE. They are a budget brand from Pirelli and used the same pattern as the late 80s Pirelli tyres. Whether they are still available or not i don't know, i suspect not sadly.

[Othen]

Originally Posted by Laird Scooby

Thanks for the link and recommendation Alan, saved the twin-pack for £17.32 in my Watch list.

You're right about people using synthetic oils and then creating oil leaks, heard of it many times but those people generally won't have a word spoken against the oil they've paid for in limb proportions!

It's the same argument with tyres, yes there are some fantastic new tyres out there but fit them on something 20, 30 or even 40 years old and they'll wear strangely without providing the grip, economy, silence etc they are famed for on newer cars.

That's because the tyres and/or the cars are designed to take mutual advantage of characteristics in both to make the most of them. Best tyres i ever had on a 7xx Volvo were the Corsa tyres i fitted to my first 740GLE. They are a budget brand from Pirelli and used the same pattern as the late 80s Pirelli tyres. Whether they are still available or not i don't know, i suspect not sadly.

Dead right Dave,

There would be no point whatsoever putting £20/litre oil in the Royal Barge and emptying it out every 2,000 miles. Similarly there would be no value in fitting expensive tyres, they would not make any difference to the handling on a car that weighs a ton and a half. I fitted budget tyres that were £150/set - they will last 30,000 mikes and 10 years.

There are plenty of people that tell me I’m wrong, that only expensive parts, fluids and tyres will do, and that everything else is a false economy. I disagree though, costs have to be kept in perspective. With the Royal Barge I can assess what needs doing and how much is worth spending, which is a luxury I don’t have with the Porsche :-)

Stay safe,

Alan

[Laird Scooby]

Spot on Alan, like i mentioned earlier, sometimes you can get a real bargain with budget radials and they're better for the car than the new-fangled Carlos Fandango tyres costing 10 times as much.

Obviously you have to buy wisely, no point fitting Chinese ditch-finders for £18/corner when decent budget radials are £20/corner.

[Othen]

Originally Posted by Laird Scooby

Spot on Alan, like i mentioned earlier, sometimes you can get a real bargain with budget radials and they're better for the car than the new-fangled Carlos Fandango tyres costing 10 times as much.

Obviously you have to buy wisely, no point fitting Chinese ditch-finders for £18/corner when decent budget radials are £20/corner.

I didn't find any tyres at £20 (if I had I'd have got them), but I thought the budget tyres I bought for £150/set (fitted and balanced) were spot on for the car (they were F1's in house brand). The tyres work fine on the RB, far better than the lower profile tyres the PO had fitted. The RB is a 40 year old car that weighs a ton and a half, has a live rear axle and really simple suspension: there would be no point whatsoever fitting anything more expensive.

With my bikes (the 4 stroke ones anyway) I always buy fairly cheap oil but change it very frequently (about every 1000 miles, less for the CCM). Lots of people (on the Triumph and Suzuki forums) tell me this is a false economy and I should be buying the latest special bike oil at £30/litre, but I think they are just plain wrong: the best route towards longevity for an engine is frequent oil changes (and cheap oil is fine).

When I bought my Skoda diesel (new) it was on an oil change regime monitored by the car's computers and would have run on to about 20,000 miles for the first oil change. After 12 months I chickened out, paid for another oil service and had Skoda alter the software to a 10,000 mile/12 month regime. 60,000 miles later the car has been faultless (if a bit boring, it is a VW after all). I'm convinced frequent oil changes have contributed a great deal.

I think the most important things about car/bike/other machine maintenance are keeping things in perspective and having an understanding of what is going on mechanically/electrically/hydraulically/thermally. I use those two principles to maintain the RB and all my bikes (because all 5 are simple machines that a chap like me can understand - the Porsche is a different matter). I've done everything that needed doing on the RB (sort of on a shoestring - that is the perspective bit), but ignored people telling me I'd have to change lots of other parts that I assess as being perfectly serviceable, otherwise it would spontaneously combust or worse (that is the understanding bit).

This has been a bit of a rambling post - I think we agree on these matters anyway. Now it is time to take Bob out and get the day going.

Stay safe.

[Laird Scooby]

The £18/£20 thing on the tyres was more for the financial relationship than the actual cost of the tyres Alan - spend ~10% for a decent budget radial than the cheapest possible budget radial. There are some truly awful ditch-finders out there, WanLi, SaiLun, TripleAAA, LandSail, Rotanza and several others that i could list.

Some are ok when new but after a few months, go hard and gripless.

More realistically with current prices i could have said £43.20 for a Goodride Vs £45 for a Matador , the first of which goes hard and gripless the second will still perform well 3 years on from fitting.

No problems with the oil but i mentioned Triple QX which turned out to be made from recycled oil. It turned 3 engines smoky overnight and created teh rear crank seal leak on the Volvo. Changing back to better oil (initially GulfTec 10W40 but now Tradetec 10W40) has got rid of the smoke, restored compression and power and similar for my lawnmower - i won't even use the Triple QX in the lawnmower now and still have an unopened 5L tub of it in the shed.
I had used Triple QX for a few years prior to that but since then, i've noticed a lot of bad reports on it. Also some Mannol oil i tried (10W40) in my Volvo has burned very quickly and the worrying part is it was in the same style containers as the Comma oil you linked to.

Granted it's just a container but worrying nonetheless.

[Othen]

Originally Posted by Laird Scooby

No problems with the oil but i mentioned Triple QX which turned out to be made from recycled oil. It turned 3 engines smoky overnight and created teh rear crank seal leak on the Volvo. Changing back to better oil (initially GulfTec 10W40 but now Tradetec 10W40) has got rid of the smoke, restored compression and power and similar for my lawnmower - i won't even use the Triple QX in the lawnmower now and still have an unopened 5L tub of it in the shed.
I had used Triple QX for a few years prior to that but since then, i've noticed a lot of bad reports on it. Also some Mannol oil i tried (10W40) in my Volvo has burned very quickly and the worrying part is it was in the same style containers as the Comma oil you linked to.

Granted it's just a container but worrying nonetheless.

Good morn Dave,

I've seen Triple QX for sale a few times, the packaging looks quite professional and there is no indication (as far as I know) that it is made from recycled oil, so it is really useful to get a first-hand report that it is not good stuff. You can use the left over Triple QX for painting your fence panels or shed - they will last for years!

I'm pretty sure I've used Mannol in the past, probably in quad bikes and motorbikes. I don't think I ever had any problems with it. I'm not sure, but I think that may be (the 10W40) what is in my 2006 Suzuki SV650S (which has 136,000 miles but doesn't use any oil) at the moment. That bike has had an oil change every 3,500 miles during its lifetime as a commuter (and every 1.000 miles since it semi-retired). Many Suzuki owners disagree with me, but I'm convinced that is why the bike has lasted so well (and none of those that have disagreed have a bike with 136,000 miles - funny that, isn't it?).

Comma has a pretty good reputation, the company has been established 50 years and the oil is still made in Britain. The RB prefers it (in that it doesn't leak any or smoke), so I'm very happy to pay £8/gallon for it rather than £45/gallon for Mobil 1 (the Porsche uses that).

Stay safe,

Alan

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by Othen

Good morn Dave,

I've seen Triple QX for sale a few times, the packaging looks quite professional and there is no indication (as far as I know) that it is made from recycled oil, so it is really useful to get a first-hand report that it is not good stuff. You can use the left over Triple QX for painting your fence panels or shed - they will last for years!

I'm pretty sure I've used Mannol in the past, probably in quad bikes and motorbikes. I don't think I ever had any problems with it. I'm not sure, but I think that may be (the 10W40) what is in my 2006 Suzuki SV650S (which has 136,000 miles but doesn't use any oil) at the moment. That bike has had an oil change every 3,500 miles during its lifetime as a commuter (and every 1.000 miles since it semi-retired). Many Suzuki owners disagree with me, but I'm convinced that is why the bike has lasted so well (and none of those that have disagreed have a bike with 136,000 miles - funny that, isn't it?).

Comma has a pretty good reputation, the company has been established 50 years and the oil is still made in Britain. The RB prefers it (in that it doesn't leak any or smoke), so I'm very happy to pay £8/gallon for it rather than £45/gallon for Mobil 1 (the Porsche uses that).

Stay safe,

Alan

Funny you suggest painting my shed and fences with the Triple QX, i've actually used old engine oil recently to do my main shed, some of which was the GulfTec stuff and that was still better (by feel) than the QX was when new! Still two sides to do on the main shed, one of which i'm not anorexic enough to get to so might have to bribe someone to do it for me!

Comma are pretty good and are generally known as "blenders" who buy base oil in bulk and then blend it and package it themselves, they have no refineries of their own. They don't normally sell rubbish and to be fair (particularly to the Mannol) some oils just don't suit an engine whether they're good quality or not.
On the Honda forum i'm on, one of the guys has an Elysion V6 (JDM import, 3.5 litre J series V6 VTEC engine with the facility to "kill" up to 3 cylinders to improve economy) used a reputable oil in it recently, can't remember without finding the thread and reported exactly what i'd found with the Mannol oil. He also reported the same as i found with the Tradetec in his Accord Coupe which uses the J30 (3.0 V6) which is different to my C27 V6 in the Rover. He'd previously tried a 5W30 synthetic oil, one of the expensive ones - maybe it was Mobil 1 but i might be wrong - and found that had simply burned away as well.

With your Suzuki, i think the main reason is the oil change regime you used, more important to change regularly than putting in some high faluting oil that claims it's good for 20k between changes and then discover it isn't.

I think i might give the Comma 20W50 a try in my 760 and see how it goes. Although the roots of the engine are older than the 240 series, Volvo revamped it in the mid 80s to give it more power, economy and reliability and with that, tightened the tolerances so 10W40 might be more suitable. That said it's got 226k miles and counting, it had 215k on when i got it and i try to give it an oil/filter change every 6 months but recently this has slipped to once a year.

The big thing as far as i can work out is finding an oil which is suitable for your engine and sticking to it, regular oil/filter changes and general good maintenance.

[john.wigley]

'Morning, chaps. I think that what you are talking about is, very simply, 'mechanical sympathy', somethig which is often lacking in this computer controlled age, and with which I whole heartedly agree. One size does not always fit all and many factors influence maintenance schedules.

Apropos oil changes; my first car was a SV Ford without an external oil filter, and the specified change interval was 1000 miles. This was on a '51 car in '65. What was acceptable then would have meant weekly changes when I was working. A sense of proportion is obviously required when using modern lubricants, which you very wisely applied in the case of your Skoda, Alan.

Regards, John.

[loki_the_glt]

Some interesting comments about oil, tyres etc. I used Duckhams Q in all my normally-aspirated red-blocks - 2 B21As, a B230A, a B230E and a B200F - whenever possible, while the Valdez got semi-synthetic because it was my daily-driver for 13k miles a year and I wanted to keep the turbo alive. (And yes, I did let it spool down as the last two miles of the commute was urban running.) Nowadays the Valdez does maybe 2000miles a year but has an annual oil change regardless.

An acquaintance had a Triumph 2500S that drank any oil other than UniPart's own stuff, so possibly car manufacturers DID know what they were doing with their recommendations for oils.

As for tyres, the original Rover P6's suspension was designed for one specific tyre - a Pirelli IIRC -and using anything else led to horrendous tyre wear and handling issues. I've got Landsails on the back of the Valdez at present, purely because I needed two tyres very quickly and these were all that I could source at half-an-hour's notice. They seem all right, but the car doesn't get pushed hard. I'll think about replacing them if they aren't up to snuff later in the year.

[Othen]

Originally Posted by Laird Scooby

On the Honda forum i'm on, one of the guys has an Elysion V6 (JDM import, 3.5 litre J series V6 VTEC engine with the facility to "kill" up to 3 cylinders to improve economy) used a reputable oil in it recently, can't remember without finding the thread and reported exactly what i'd found with the Mannol oil. He also reported the same as i found with the Tradetec in his Accord Coupe which uses the J30 (3.0 V6) which is different to my C27 V6 in the Rover. He'd previously tried a 5W30 synthetic oil, one of the expensive ones - maybe it was Mobil 1 but i might be wrong - and found that had simply burned away as well.

With your Suzuki, i think the main reason is the oil change regime you used, more important to change regularly than putting in some high faluting oil that claims it's good for 20k between changes and then discover it isn't.

I think i might give the Comma 20W50 a try in my 760 and see how it goes. Although the roots of the engine are older than the 240 series, Volvo revamped it in the mid 80s to give it more power, economy and reliability and with that, tightened the tolerances so 10W40 might be more suitable. That said it's got 226k miles and counting, it had 215k on when i got it and i try to give it an oil/filter change every 6 months but recently this has slipped to once a year.

The big thing as far as i can work out is finding an oil which is suitable for your engine and sticking to it, regular oil/filter changes and general good maintenance.

You are right about oils suiting engines - normally the ones that were designed with them in mind.

My Porsche is a 981 - a very modern motor that is controlled by lots of computers, but (touch wood) has proven to be a very reliable engine type as long as it is maintained properly. I have never seen any part of the engine on that car (it doesn't even have a dipstick - a computer does that), and I entrust it to an excellent Porsche specialist (not a Porsche dealer) for its once every 2 years service. It was designed with that service interval in mind and takes 2 gallons of Mobil 1 (has never used any) so I'm happy to trust the regime it was designed for.

The Skoda computer controlled service schedule is (I think) designed for fleet sales where the car will only be kept for 3 years and 60,000 miles. That means the car probably only has 2 oil changes before it is sold on to unsuspecting Joe Public as a family car - but no worries, it is out of warranty by then. The car's computers have an alternative setting for yearly, 10,000 mile services - but I had to ask Skoda to change to that.

Bikers are mostly leisure motorists, and mostly convinced that there is some intrinsic difference between bike and car engines, and so many buy very expensive special bike oils. They will never be convinced that Mannol type 10w40 will be fine in a bike engine if it is changed frequently, but at the same time find it hard to explain how my SV650S has done 136,000 miles without any problems.

The Royal Barge is a 40 year old car, and I suspect the engine was designed more than 50 years ago (the bottom end maybe longer ago). 20W50 works just fine in it, hence me just taking advantage of a special offer that provides oil until the spring of 2023 for £8/year.

That was a long winded way of saying agree with you wholeheartedly Dave - it is horses for courses when it comes to engines and oil, and deciding which is (for me) a result of the perspective and engineering understanding principles.

Stay safe,

Alan