Conventional vs synthetic for first oil change?

[ally99]

Hey all. In advance, please forgive my mechanical inexperience (I consider it a learning disability, personally). My 500 mile oil change is due. I've heard different arguments for conventional vs synthetic oil for the first few thousand miles. If this has already been posted, feel free to link my ass right to it, but a quick search didn't turn up what I was looking for. Can anyone give me your thoughts on which oil to use and why?
Thanks a ton!

[csmith12]

You should know it don't matter for squat. When in doubt though, you can't go wrong with dino oil (conventional).

[old3]

You got a Walmart near ya? Of course you do, your in Ga!

Rotella T can be bought by the gallon there. Any diesel oil is safe for the clutch. JASO approved!

Rotella = Shell = KTMs recommended oils for all their bike a few years ago.

I used to be a synthetic nutter, Mobil then even became an Amsoil dealer I used so much of it. It was big $ and I felt like I was doing something good for the bikes. Then I started supporting 4 race bikes and 2 street bikes. Bah!

Too much $, and no real reward IMO. The Rotella goes in my $10,000 bike supermoto/MX bike, I used it in my $14,000 street bike and it is just dandy in the $5000 bike too. You can get syn or regular. I use the regular stuff, no oil issues. Change it when it needs it. 3k miles is maybe too often depending on how you ride.

PS, Wallymarty has your oil filter too!

[Tigerpaw]

Originally Posted by ally99

Thanks a ton!

[Tigerpaw]

Originally Posted by old3

Too much $, and no real reward IMO.

That kind of talk will get you banned!

[old3]

Originally Posted by Tigerpaw

That kind of talk will get you banned!

Then I'll have nowhere to hang out!!!

I bought it hook, line and sinker way back when. More expense made me feel I was doing something extra good. I know better now. in 35 years of riding and hot rodding cars & trucks, I haven't had a single oil related failure using either type.

Save your $ for tires! Fresh rubber is money well spent!

[Motofool]

Originally Posted by ally99

............Can anyone give me your thoughts on which oil to use and why?...........

http://faq.ninja250.org/wiki/When_ca...nthetic_oil%3F

http://faq.ninja250.org/wiki/Why_Synthetic_Oil%3F

http://faq.ninja250.org/wiki/Preferred_Brands

[ally99]

Originally Posted by old3

Rotella T can be bought by the gallon there. Any diesel oil is safe for the clutch. JASO approved!

Too much $, and no real reward IMO. The Rotella goes in my $10,000 bike supermoto/MX bike, I used it in my $14,000 street bike and it is just dandy in the $5000 bike too. You can get syn or regular. I use the regular stuff, no oil issues. Change it when it needs it. 3k miles is maybe too often depending on how you ride.
!

I use Rotella typically, but always having old bikes before, I always used synthetic. This is my first time ever breaking in a new bike.
Thanks for the links Hernan! Checking them out now.

[ally99]

GREAT links Hernan! My questions are completely answered. Conventional until around 3,500 miles for me!

[old3]

I think we can all agree, just do something. My Ninja 300 is about to clear 9000 miles (damn snow storm tomorrow!). It had the original oil about 1,000 miles. I've changed it 3 times since. Tuned with pods & stuff. No worries with Rotella. Use what you like.

[InvisiBill]

Everyone seems to have their own opinion on oil and break-in.

Originally Posted by http://www.mototuneusa.com/break_in_secrets.htm

There's a very small window of opportunity to get the rings to seal really well ... the first 20 miles !!

...

Q: If break- in happens so quickly, why do you recommend using petroleum break- in oil for 1500 miles ??

A: Because while about 80% of the ring sealing takes place in the first hour of running the engine, the last 20% of the process takes a longer time. Street riding isn't a controlled environment, so most of the mileage may not be in "ring loading mode". Synthetic oil is so slippery that it actually "arrests" the break in process before the rings can seal completely. I've had a few customers who switched to synthetic oil too soon, and the rings never sealed properly no matter how hard they rode. Taking a new engine apart to re - ring it is the last thing anyone wants to do, so I recommend a lot of mileage before switching to synthetic. It's really a "better safe than sorry" situation.

Originally Posted by http://www.calsci.com/motorcycleinfo/Oils1.html

The theory that synthetic oils should not be used during break in is the same as the theory that your engine will break in better if you use synthetic oil but add a dinner candle to your four quarts of engine oil. Frankly, I find this theory, um, questionable. Oh, hell, laughable. Corvettes and Porsches come from the factory with Mobil-1 in their engines. Remember, these engineers have designed world-champion engines for F1, Indy, Le Mans 24 hours, etc.

There's a lot of mythology surrounding break-in oil. It's simply not the case that synthetic oils are more "slippery" than conventional oils. Also, break-in of a modern engine is completely different than break-in of an engine made before about 1980. Modern engines, by comparison to something made in the '60s, are pretty much already broken in from the factory due to the fact that today we hold much tighter machining tolerances.

The superior film strength mentioned at http://faq.ninja250.org/wiki/When_ca...nthetic_oil%3F actually seems to be the most reasonable logic I've heard for not using synthetic, though I don't know enough to actually say how much that would really affect it.

Here's a quote from someone saying that MotoMan's "hard break-in" method is stupid. It basically says that the worst possible thing that could happen is what the Wiki describes as the reason for preferring dino over synthetic (metal peaks breaking through the oil film).

Originally Posted by http://www.mototuneusa.com/power_news_--_future_horsepower.htm

The reason you want to run an engine softly for the first 600 miles is because of machining asperities (the microscopic "mountain ranges" on the surface of the metal). After a part is machined, the cutting process involved leaves the surface with microscopic peaks and valleys, creating a microscopically rough surface. The peaks of this surface happen to be GREATER IN HEIGHT THAN THE THICKNESS OF THE OIL FILM COVERING THEM. In English: the engine must be run with minimum load until these peaks are polished down, flat, and are no longer PROTRUDING THROUGH THE SURFACE OF THE OIL, as they are right after machining/manufacturing of the part. If you run the engine hard before this happens, you will press the parts together so hard that the oil film collapses and the peaks on one part will collide with the peaks on the mating part: Peak on part A will hit peak on part B, and given the adhesive properties of superheated metal, they will stick together. Once this happens, peak A breaks off of its original part and bonds to (melts onto) the mating part, and you now have scoring. Once scoring starts, it will continue to increase (more metal from one part sticks to the other part) until (a) enough metal migrates from one part to the other to cause a new smooth surface (albeit the wrong shaped surface; ie greatly reduced seal in the case of pistons and rings) or (b) the part suffers catastrophic failure (eg engine seizes, part cracks, etc.). If the engine is run softly, the parts polish each other, rather than score each other.

Unfortunately, anecdotal evidence is probably all you'll ever see for this stuff. There's some semi-scientific testing out there (engine builders with lots of customers, testing that attempts to repeat the same conditions, etc.), but nobody wants to buy dozens of bikes (with multiple copies of each setup to make sure you isolate any random factory issues) and run them on a dyno until they die, just to prove that it is or isn't ok to use this procedure or that product, or that one thing works twice as good as another. With most people having only one bike and nobody being able to duplicate the exact conditions your bike is ridden in, it's pretty much impossible to come to any real scientific conclusion. Regardless of what you do or how it turns out, there's not really any way to say that doing something else wouldn't have been better or worse than whatever you did.


I don't really have any good evidence for when to switch from dino to synthetic (or whether or not you need dino at all), but it's been shown that synthetics maintain their viscosity longer (due to needing fewer/no viscosity index improvers, which break down over time) and that wet-clutch engines break down oils much faster than standard engines (a Honda Accord broke its oil down to 91.8% of its original viscosity in 3,600 miles; a bike got the same oil down to 72.2% after only 800 miles). The standards tested against and the additives used in "commercial/diesel" oils seem to generally match up better with the older tech and simpler designs of the motorcycle engines I'm familiar with. The JASO standards were created in response to the new API standards, which were getting too far from what was ideal for a bike. I know the 300 is a bit newer, but I assume it's still the same basic engine as the 250, and hasn't really changed much since the '80s. Generally speaking, I (and a lot of other bike owners) find the Rotella T6 to be a pretty good oil for a pretty good price (with a sale and a rebate, I managed to get a couple gallons for $9 each last time). I plan to have my oil analyzed in the future to make sure it's holding up as well as I would like, which is probably the best way to figure out what's best for your particular scenario.

[mania]

Originally Posted by old3

Then I'll have nowhere to hang out!!!

I bought it hook, line and sinker way back when. More expense made me feel I was doing something extra good. I know better now. in 35 years of riding and hot rodding cars & trucks, I haven't had a single oil related failure using either type.

Save your $ for tires! Fresh rubber is money well spent!

Boy ain't that the truth!
Fresh rubber is a much better deal

You know that Motul 300v is going for $33.53 a liter here?

[fishdip]

http://www.mototuneusa.com/break_in_secrets.htm
this guy recommends using regular oil tell a few 1000 miles.