Originally Posted by roadkill2
Absolutely no hard fact here, but empirical evidence would indicate that the cams aren't being made of the same materials or surface hardened as well as they used to be.
I'm saying that because for years, 99% of us ran plain old Valvoline or Pennz racing oil that had little or no additive and while we suffered lots of bearing loss, seldom did we hurt a camshaft, and when we did it was usually an errant rod or broken lifter that did the damage, not a flat lobe . .
Ok RK, I gotcha on this one... your key word here is "for [years] - plain old Valvoline or Pennz [racing] oil with little or no additive" ...!
Wrong... these oils DID have the ZPPD additive in them, before the government mandated the removal of such because of the poisonous fumes and pluggin of catalytic coverters starting in the mid eighties.
Here's a little story you can verify in web research...
One of the greatest racing oils ever made and readily on the shelves most everywhere was Kendall GT1. Kendall sold out with the stipulation that the buyers do not ever change the high ZPPD formula or the iconic green color. Well, it wasn't long before the new owners did both, so they took the new owners to court in breach of contract lawsuit. The old owners won the lawsuit to retake over their formula and color, but they could not have the name back... so, being the huge main refirnery and processing plant is based in Bradford PA, they went back into production of the "Brad-Penn Grade 1 racing oil - the Green Oil".
As Paul Harvey would say... "now you know the rest of the story..." :O)