Can we talk oil in high-performance motorcycles?

[OtisBlkR1]

UOS's may show some differences, but in my dual purpose bike (R1) street and occasional track day, ive tried so many oils that it seems like a fools errand. I started with Dino, went to more expensive Dino, went to expensive syn, moved to cheaper priced SYN, and im highly considering HDEO soon. Ive seen the inside of my motor in 2009 (Total rebuild) and it looked PERFECT.. i attribute this to my VERY conservative OCI's Ive never had any oil in this shared sump system longer than 2,500 miles the majority of the OCI's were between 1,000 and 2,000 depending on the duty the bike was subject to. SO, with that said i can say in all honesty today that im much more of a believer in the frequency of your change V.S. whats in the sump. Ive NEVER found a oil that just makes dramatic differences in shift quality, other than fresh oil.. the differences in the rest were minor if not notable at all.
my two pennies..

 

[rraiderr]

Originally Posted By: sm00thpapa
Originally Posted By: rraiderr
Based on the my endless UOA's and the testing Sunruh did I am running the maxima 4 ultra or the Amsoil 20w-50 in my track bike.

I did break it in with rotlla.


Do you have a link to those UOA's?


Send user Sunruh a PM and he will provide you the data, he has quite a bit and is a [censored] of a nice guy.

 

[rraiderr]

Originally Posted By: CBR.worm


The end result though is that with many thousands of race miles and having gone through many engine iterations, I never had an oil related engine failure.

My results from the limited UOA's I did many years ago was that no oil I ran was suitable for more than about 1,000 miles. Maybe things have improved today - I think honda calls for 8K OCI on my current bike - which is double what Nissan requires in my cars.


Our 3 GSX-R's spend most of their life at the track and I have been doing it for many years. I have to agree, to date I have not seen an oil related failure. I have seen oil pumps and filters fail but no actual oils fail.

Being a track bike our oil does not see all that many miles before we change it so that is probably why our UOA's come out so good.

 

[Travis99LS1]

I have been using amsoil 10w40 in my bike since it was new. I have recently switched to rotella 15w40. It's cheaper and the bike shifts just as good as with the amsoil. I have 16,8xx miles on it and its still running great. I used to use rotella in my yz250f....never had a problem.

 

[sm00thpapa]

Originally Posted By: Travis99LS1
I have been using amsoil 10w40 in my bike since it was new. I have recently switched to rotella 15w40. It's cheaper and the bike shifts just as good as with the amsoil. I have 16,8xx miles on it and its still running great. I used to use rotella in my yz250f....never had a problem.



What is your OCI with the SRT 15W-40?

 

[Travis99LS1]

2500 miles..with the filter every other change.

 

[Brent_G]

The suzuki gets rotella.
Why: Im not really into UOA's but from the way the bike feels(smooth as silk shifts, quiet motor, and the great wear i have personaly seen in my race quad, i feel that the rotella will protect my bike as good as anything else under the conditions i ride it.

Now the R1 is a different story. It has mainly had amsoil seeing as it sees 20+ passes a weekend at the track, for those conditions i feel it worth to pay the extra. But i did just change to Delvac in it to see how it felt. In the 600 it made the tranny feel clunky, but after about a 200 mile ride on delvac it feels amazing in the r1. i do 700 mile oci's when im drag racing it and when im just doing street riding i got 1.5k usually on rotella.

In my opinion each bike has the flavor it likes, and its fun seeing how each oil acts in your bike.