[LongBox]

A bit of my own experience: I had a flat tappet engine re-built, and used modern, hig-qulaity oil, only to discover that only a few thousand miles down the road, the cam had deteriorated, with a couple of the lobes being almost flat. I had a new cam installed, and from then on, I used a Lucas Oil additive, with high zinc content, and those troubles went away. My 69 is the only vehicle I have without roller tappets, and I'm using Mobil1 5W-30, and it seems to be doing well. The previous owner used Valvoline 20W-40, so perhaps the cam/tappets got off to a good start.

Against conventional wisdom, I installed new lifters on the old cam, slathered with huge amounts of assembly lube, and so far, so good. The cam lobes appeared perfect at that time. We'll see what develops.

Frequent changes, proper warm ups, and so on can't hurt at all. Neither can buying quality oil and filters.