| Author | Message | ||
     Whodom |
I found this post in the Sportster.org archives this morning while looking for something else and thought I'd pass it along. I guess I better go change my oil now! The Evils of Synthetic Oil From: "Brad Litz" <hulkss@mn.rr.com> Subject: The "Truth" about Synthetic Oil Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 20:20:35 -0500 Beware of synthetic oil, it can do terrible things to you and your beloved motorcycle. It will not only leak out of your engine faster than you can put it in, but it will also cause your oil filter to clog and implode, dumping debris and dirt into your lubrication system. Your piston rings will never seat and you'll burn more oil than gasoline. It also will make every part of your bike permanently slippery because of its linear molecular chain dispersion action. Then it will leak onto your kickstand causing it to retract automatically, dropping your bike on the ground! But that's not all... Synthetic oil will round off your sprockets and spin your bearings. It will also splatter onto your seat causing your girlfriend to fall off in the apex of a turn and she'll never ride with you again. Synthetic oil coats your timing window with a whitish pro-emulsification additive that is both non-removable and highly corrosive. Synthetic oil will completely leak onto the ground overnight and your dog will drink it and die. Synthetic oil will wear out your tires and make your battery leak. It will give you the desperate need to urinate after you put your full leathers on and then jam your zippers shut. It will contaminate your gasoline causing your bike to stall on railroad tracks and accelerate uncontrollably near police cars. It will make it rain during rallies and on weekends. It will slicken your timing gears causing them to jump teeth and break your valves to bits. Synthetic oil chemically weakens valve train parts and causes the clearances to change every six miles. Then it melts the black soles of your riding boots right before you walk across your new carpeting. While riding past groups of attractive women it will cause both of your handlebar grips to slip off at the same time. It also causes your swingarm to crack, your studs to break, and your rotors to warp, and then it voids your warranty by changing your odometer reading to 55,555. It also dries out your wetclutch and wets your dryclutch. It makes your clutch cable fail in the heaviest traffic on the hottest day of the year while putting an angry wasp in your helmet for good measure. Synthetic oil hides your 1/2 inch socket and puts superglue on your earplugs. Synthetic oil will scratch your faceshield and make your gloves shrink two sizes the night before trackday. Synthetic oil stole your neutral and sold it to the Chinese for $1.25. Synthetic oil will make you grow a tail. Synthetic oil will write long crazy e-mails to your Internet friends and then sign your name at the bottom! Brad XL1250R | ||
| Steelshoe |
It's true! Everything he said happened to me, but I continue to use it anyway. | ||
| Ray_maines |
Makes about as much sense as being too slippery and causing roller bearings to slide and develop a flat spot. | ||
| Metalstorm |
Finally someone speaks my language! I learned sarcasm before I could even crawl or talk. Now I'm thinking I'll switch to syn earlier than planned. Thankyou for posting that. It was the best argument for using syn that I ever heard.(read) | ||
| Prez |
so that's why i got a tail???lol...nice | ||
| Rubberdown |
Funny funy phunny! | ||
| Sooner |
LOL Prez, that's not a tail, all guys have them. Tails grow from the back.  | ||
| Midknyte |
whew! 'least it don't git yer sister pregnant... | ||
| Cyclonemaniac |
Well I already use synthetic but I did get a new tail recently  | ||
| Buellj79 |
Nice ink bro! | ||
| Kdan |
The love handles are sexy too!  | ||
| Cyclonemaniac |
Thanks for the complements! Sure was alot harder getting the handles installed than having the Tat. Took many years of 12oz curls, but by golly I finally got em! I might post another when the ink work is done. Still have somewhere between 7-10 hrs of shading that has to be done!  | ||
| Tramp |
ooooops. don't ever go near the big house with ink of a gorgeous, nude woman... ON YOUR BACK! | ||
| Tramp |
the synthetic oil debate rages on.... there is a degree of tenacity that our old-school roller bearing low-ends actually require (much like the way a chainsaw bar& chain requires a sticky oil to actually work right), which synthetics, by molecular design do not provide. hey, i'm only on mile 214,599 on my never-rebuilt mill (it's only had organic oil).... what do I know  | ||
| Cyclonemaniac |
Guess I'd better not get caught, er uh I mean better not do anything to get sent up! He he he! | ||
| Tramp |
judging by your response, i doubt you'd hafta worry  | ||
| Rocketman |
The synthetic oil debate rages on because there are still idiots around who subscribe to some old school bull. I recall when turbo's first came out on Saab's. The number of long time technicians that preached the story of how unreliable turbo's were was unreal. Truth is technology had passed them by. I regularly see 200000 mile Saab Turbo's with their original turbo in fine working order and I can also tell you a lot of the older models I see are not as well serviced as they once were (until they find their way to me). Myths are born of ignorance and the motor industry is a hot bed of breeding. One day all oil will be synthetic and all ball bearings will be made in outer space. Rocket | ||
| Tramp |
synthetic oil will ALWAYS be the superior lube for turbos, as it resists 'coking'. were buells powered by turbocharged swedish mills, synth would be fine. i've rebuilt more than my share of saabs (and more so of other european vehicles), and don't recall seeing any roller mains. had they big-ball roller mains, i'd think they, too, would prefer organic, tenacious high molybdenum/sulfur lubes. Buell: roller main aircooled pushrod engine SLaab: watercooled, cap bearing belt/chain-drive cam apples and oranges, (Message edited by tramp on July 02, 2005) | ||
| Brucelee |
I would agree that syn oil will someday be the only motor oil made. I also see us running our bikes 10K between oil changes. Cars at 25K. Nice from an environmental perspective I think. | ||
| Rocketman |
Tramp I owned my first Saab, a 95 station wagon, about 26 years ago. I've specialized in everything Saab for 18 years and in all that time I've never never never had a crankshaft reground. I can honestly count on one hand the number of Saab engines I've re-shelled. One thing I can tell you for a fact. It ain't about the oil it's about the quality of the metal in Saab's case, be it a turbo or normally aspirated. If you seriously believe a roller bearing is less suited to synthetic oil (nothing that hasn't been said by others here before by the way), or is that a roller bearing is more suited to grown in the ground oils, then god bless you. That's your choice. My point would be that people who print such bull do so in danger of misleading others. Personally I feel comfortable recommending the use of any synthetic oil but I would not feel the same way recommending the use of dyno oils without sound scientific proof. Sorry but I don't know your background well enough to trust your reasoning to run my S1W on anything less than synthetic oil. Stating plain and roller bearings as apples and oranges when they both run in oil makes me less trusting of your credibility. Refusing to accept that a superior man made liquid lubricating product isn't compatible with a good old fashioned steel round ball (or pin) has to be one of the stupidest things anyone could ever say. But hey no point in arguing. You go with what you feel best with and I'll do like wise. Hopefully though I won't have mislead anyone. Rocket | ||
| Tramp |
OK so call me stupid.... that is, after you've run your buell for over 214,000 miles on YOUR coice of oil *some* of us have worked on a wiiiiiiiiiiide array of motors, and we understand the different needs of each type. | ||
| Blake |
Synthetic rules. All multimillion-dollar heavy equipment power plants, all jet engines, all Porsches, and most all any other high dollar powerplants use synthetic lubricant. Lose the myth. The weak/poor/inferior molecules of conventional oil are weak, poor and inferior. They have no superiority over stronger/exceptional/superior molecules comprising synthetic oil. But I'd never think to call you "stupid". Come over to the light. Synthetics rule.  | ||
| Iamike |
Since we are rehashing the Syn vs. Dino (I always like a heated dicussion), is the new Mobile-1 V-Twin stuff worth the cost? I have been using the regular Mobile-1, 15W50 in the crankcase & transmission for 50,000mi. without any issues. I was looking at the new V-Twin oil at Autozone and it is almost twice the cost, $9 v. $5. Granted a few bucks here & there isn't a big deal but when the old oil meets the recommended standards why pay that much more. | ||
| Brucelee |
I have never seen any credible information that would have me use the Mobil V-twin over the 15-50. I am not saying that there are not certain characteristics of the oil that are superior (viscosity index for example), simply that the 15-50 is a great oil on its own and doubling the price is not justified in my opinion. | ||
| Tramp |
i do not, for a second, see synth as 'inferior', or even as 'just' on par with organic oil. The way I DO see it is that Harley-davidson engines, much like many archaic diesels, have really 'coarse' (ie BIg-balled) roller mains, and the BIG spaces in betweeen the big balls are {better served by a 'stickier' oil. again, much like a chainsaw bar and chain. further, one of the reasons that i prefer organic is that by cost comparison, for the same $ one can do about 3 more oil changes per $ period, thus allowing more frequent oil changes with organic, thus expelling more particulates and keeping a higher oil ph. both orgainic nad synth lose ph (becoming more acidic) through combustion, and both still collect (naturally) metallic and carbonic particulates. more frequent oil changes mean less acidity for your mill and fewer particulates circulating. for the same money (even in another engine), why not just change organic more frequently? I understand that synth is the way to go on so many levels. I also understand, and am pretty pleased, that it's THE oil of the present AND future. I also understand that our old-tech Harley engines are NOT engines of the present (gulp! did he SAY that?) or the future, and i adjust my lubes accordingly. believe me, in many of the automotive engines i've built (BMW, Audi, MB) I've been a streict synth user, and certainly so in BMW motorcycles. I wouldn't advise a (modern oil-head or k-bike)BMW m/c customer to use anything BUT synth. Our Buells, however, area different animal entirely, and most techs who've worked on many engine styles recognize this unavoidable fact. like i say, i've done well with my mileage by just using diesel rotella or spectro v-twin formulation (i try to avoid, aside form actual bikes, any product distributed by HD) orgainic. likie i say, that's just me, and i haven't found any evo engined machines (BT or sporty) with over 150,000-ish miles using synth. to me, this fact of (literal) pratice speaks far more concisely than any of our academic arguments.}} (Message edited by tramp on July 03, 2005) | ||
| Rocketman |
Tramp my apologies for implying you're stupid. I was a little miffed that you might be trying to upstage me as a Saab guru  Putting the tech stuff to one side here's my take on Synth v Dyno. Pay the extra. An £8000 motorcycle deserves no less. Never mind how much more we throw at our Buells in extras. Why pay hundreds of dollars on an after market pipe or carb for example then begrudge a few dollars more for dyno oil? Surely no one buys that big ball theory, which leads nicely to my next point? Lots of us are running Buells on high end parts inside the motors. Would you risk running a Wiseco forged piston in a plated cylinder or an S&S crank assembly or fancy after market cams and lifters in anything but synth oil? End of the day what Buell builds its motors with in my book is no less deserving of the same care and attention even if their own components are not as high a quality as the after market choice. Now I do accept that dyno oil is well capable of extremely high mileages and offering long life to boot in many many different types of engine but what dyno oil doesn't offer in those same engines is the superior protection synthetic oil will guarantee when the demands of those same engines are pushed beyond the capabilities of what mineral oils can offer. That I believe is a hard fact. Anyway like I said I retract the stupid comment.  Rocket | ||
| Jlnance |
I also see us running our bikes 10K between oil changes. You can do that now actually. Buell recomends you change the oil every 5000 miles, and Amsoil is willing to guarantee that you can go double that with their oil. | ||
| Ray_maines |
And I offer that each and every one of us will blow the bike up, crash it, sell it, or rebuild the motor for some other reason before we wear it out. You could use Wesson Oil and be OK if you changed it now and then. Don't get stressed out about flat spots on your roller bearings. Just ride the bike and smile a lot. | ||
| Tramp |
i never mentioned 'flat spots', and never subscribed to that theory. my issue was more with inate heat buildup as a result of diminished thermal 'sinking' of bearings when they run with a less-tenacious oil.please, fellas- ihave no dog in this fight, i am very pro-synth, but not in any of the HD neosaurs. thanks rocketman...but to be perfectly frank, i'm pretty stupid much of the time | ||
| Sportyeric |
Tramp I owned my first Saab, a 95 station wagon, about 26 years ago. Rocket, you should have gone here:http://web.mit.edu/adorai/timetraveler/. I guess you could still could/ could have. |
