As far as I am concerned, the money is not the main issue. The issue is that I just do not believe in the hype that the motorcycle oil companies are spreading around. I also have many many years experience with all types of motorcycles both road and dirt and I know for a fact that with a good non synthetic oil and decent oil & filter change interval and carefull air filter maintenance and making sure oil is always topped off then most riders will never wear out a stock motor or have an oil related failure. Failures are due to rider or wrenching errors.

 

Amsoil

 

When they can't think of anything else to back them up, somebody always comes up with the "I have never seen an oil related failure" thing. If you have any oil at all in there, you aren't likely to get an abrupt "failure", per se. What you are going to do is get premature wear, particularly in high pressure areas like the transmission and cam if the oil doesn't have a robust additive package. There is more to oil than just the oil itself.....

If ones decision comes down to economics....well hey oil is cheaper than a rebuild!

 

Oil is one of those places where you get what you pay for....or to put it better, YOU DON'T GET WHAT YOU DON'T PAY FOR.

The difference between crappy oil and great oil, is the price of a beer.

 

Premature wear you say?
There are only two ways to measure premature wear and I?ve done both of them.

#1 is to disassemble the engine and measure parts wear. Things like pistons, bores, cranks etc need to be inspected and measured for wear. This is not practical for the average person for obvious reasons. I do it on the race engines I work on because we have to stay on top of things to win races.

#2 is to do oil analysis. A person can learn much by performing an oil analysis on a given engine. All engines wear no matter what oil you use in them. The difference in wear from synthetic oil to dino oil is negligible at most. This has been proven to my satisfaction with the oils we use. (Some engines we use synthetic oil, some we don?t.) IMHO people a throwing away a lot of good oil (I use to). I don?t know this for a fact and neither do the people that are doing it unless you have a lab like Blackstone to confirm whether the oil is good or not. Reconranger; are you using oil analysis? All I hear is crickets!!!
Lets do a little math for fun shall we??!!!!
Lets say you own a brand X quad that has an oil sump the size of a thimble, and you?re a kid that rides your quad every weekend. So lets say you put 10 hours on your quad a week. (Some put more, some put less so lets just say 10 hours a week.) Most of the hot shots that own small sump engines say they change their oil out around 10 hours. (A lot say around 6 to 7 hours or less!!!)

The Maxima oil that ?some people? are recommending cost between 10 to 12 or more US dollars a liter. Lets go with $11 for an average. We need 2 liters for our brand X quad. So it would be $22 bucks for an oil change.

Now the math part.

We are going to change our oil every weekend if we change our oil at the 10 hour mark.
So:
52 (the # of weekends in a year) X $22.00 bucks = $1144.00 a year in JUST oil changes using Maxima synthetic!!!

Now lets do the same math using Rotella dino.

52 X $5.00 bucks (2.50 a quart) = $260.00 a year.

$1144 - $260 = a savings of $884 a year!!!!

Lets say your going to keep your brand X quad 5 years before the next super quad comes out and you want it. Over that 5 years you are going to be able to keep $4,420 DOLLARS!!!!
IS THAT CORRECT???? CAN THAT BE RIGHT???? Yep, sure is!!!! I don't know about you, but that?s BIG bucks to me!!!

If I owned a big buck engine, quad, here is what I would do. Get a good brand of synthetic oil (mobile1, Amsoil, Maxima, or what ever) and put it in your engine and run it for your oil change period. Dump it and send a sample off to Blackstone for a base line.
Then put some good commercial dino oil like Rotella, Delo, ect in the sump. Run it for the same time period and dump it. Off goes a sample to the lab again. Take the two papers and compare for wear. Will Rotella last long enough for a 10 hour ride? Maybe, maybe not; I can?t tell you. Only the lab can tell you.

Then I would buy the cheapest oil I could find as long as the lab tells me it?s within acceptable wear limits and use it in my quad.

All in all, oil dosen't mean much in the real world. The aircleaner is the most important part on the engine in a dusty environment like a quad operates in. OMHO people need to stop fixating on oil and check their aircleaner more.

Weeuuu, I need a beer after typing that!!!! Hey, I can afford one ?and? $4,415 dollars in aftermarket parts now!!!

 

Oil analysis is another example of thing that folks come up with when they have run out of other rational arguments.......

Just for the record, I am a professional biochemist (medical research), and hence my interest in the chemistry and composition of oils. There is this common notion that all oils are very similar and they should all be the same (low) price, but it just isn't true! Look at the price of crude oil today. In the future, I can see a quart of low quality petroleum oil costing you as much as premium synthetic does now, the way things are going. The price of ester synthetics that aren't petroleum based, should become more competitive in the future.

Oil analysis is absolutely the most abused thing I have ever seen! It is an example of a bunch of amatures trying to play scientist, and getting it all way wrong. OIL ANALYSIS IS INTENDED TO TELL YOU THINGS ABOUT YOUR ENGINE, not the oil. OIL ITSELF SHOULD BE TESTED IN THE LABORATORY UNDER CAREFULLY CONTROLED CONDITIONS. When you test oil in a thousand different engines, you introduce a thousand different variables and that muddles up all the other data.

Here is a great example: A guy named Unruh (you may have seen his stuff on the BITOG site), asked me to send him some of my favorite oil for oil analysis testing. It came back from Blackstone with huge amounts of LEAD in it. Now what does that tell us about the oil, absolutely nothing! What it does tell us is that HE IS RUNNING LEADED RACE GAS AND HIS RINGS ARE SHOT AND PASSING A HUGE AMOUNT OF FUEL INTO THE CRANK CASE. In addition, when you are passing fuel by the rings, it gets into the crankcase and dilutes the oil, SO NO OIL IS GOING TO STAY "IN GRADE" VERY LONG UNDER THOSE CONDITIONS. So, we have learned something about his crappy worn out engine, but it doesn't tell you anything about what that same oil will do in any one of a thousand other different engines! This is just something ridiculous, that gets passed off as "science".

If you want an example of a money making racket, well you know for sure that places like Blackstone sure love all the money that the OIL ANALYSIS JUNKIES throw at them! Maybe rather than spending money on analysis, it might make more sense for them to spend that wasted money on a great oil to start with???

In any case, I don't think money is really an issue at all for most riders. Sure, it may bug someone that they have to pay $5 for a quart of good oil ranther than $2 for some crappy oil, but the overall economic inpact of that to the individual is really negligable. And for sure, if you have money to waste on analysis, you sure have money to spend on great oil!

 

Oh yea, and the virgin oil analysis that Blacktone did was hillarious too. In their comments they kept saying how the oil had all this ZDDP in it (additives that protect metal in high pressure areas like between gears, if the oil gets squezed out). Clearly, they (Blackstone) didn't know that dirt bikes don't have catalytic converters, have integrated transmissions, and that API SG motorcycle oils happily still contain high levels of ZDDP (unlike "car" oils). You could tell that they were just absolutely clueless and didn't know the first thing about motorcycle specific oils. Doesn't say much for guys who are supposed to be some kind of oil experts!

 

Just a note on oils. Honda's only reccomendations are (oils Rated SG or higher with no Energy Conserving Mark) on the insignia. Let's face it, if the oil is above Honda's standard rating you are not going to have an oil related problem, so I wouldn't waste my money on oils claiming to do more than what's needed. JMO

 

So we should all be happy then with just ones little square of toilet paper...right! Just use whatever the bare minumum is huh??? Never any overkill???

That's like saying we should all be happy with our stock exhausts? Our stock air filters? The crummy little skid plates that come on stock quads? The pathetic tires that come stock on most quads? Hey, a 90 will haul an adult around, so we should all be happy just riding around on 90.....in your world where all one ever does is the minumum that's required.....

Personally, I prefer some overkill when it comes to lubricating my machinery...and everywhere else in my life!

I just hope you aren't a surgeon, or an airplane mechanic!

 

With extra TP, free flowing exhaust, less restrictive air filter, or skids anyone can see a benefit. You are not relying completely on claims from some company with a vested financial interest. Even some claims from exhaust and filter mfgs are bogus IMO. But with $8.00 per quart motor oil we are asked to just have faith that our motors are better off. So you claim that our motors will last longer. Well I do not believe this. Look at report from Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad Co where they regularly get 60,000 miles out of their Honda Ranchers with only Honda specified maintenance. I would say this is good enough for me and a pretty darn good testimonial for Honda specified maint.