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1st oil-change comparison: Italian vs Japanese vs Chinese


DannoXYZ

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Don't know if it was here, but I remember seeing study where they collected oil-samples from various bikes at 1st oil-change and analyse them. Japanese was cleanest, Italians weren't much better than Chinese.

 

Anyone have link to this thread or to study itself? thx

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Great video Danno... thanks for posting...

 

Blackstone Labs data concludes wear levels depends on the type
of engine and who made it than oil brand...

 

Quote

"Well, we’re no closer to saying that one type of oil is better than another,
that’s for sure. We see much more variation in wear levels from the type
of engine, the time on the oil, the viscosity, the use the engine sees, etc.
Whatever differences exist from oil brand to oil brand, we don’t see a lot
of difference in terms of wear for most types of engines."

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Yeah modern oils are simply magical compared to what was available just couple decades ago.

 

I wonder what differentiates "type of engine"?

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Great, respect Fortnine and his opinions. About to do the first 600 mile oil change on my Multistrada, hope to make it to my second. ha

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One of my friend's 2016 1200 DVT made it to 29k-miles.

Then he found remnants of rod-bearings on oil-screen.

It was probably doomed from moment it rolled off factory floor...

 

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More book answers.  "Unless it's made wrong..." there's a bunch of lab tests from the early eighties in tribology journals that demolish all of the engine break-in myths out there, but because they're in journals no one outside of engineering academia or inside companies goes and looks them up anymore.  But in modern engines with plateau-honed cylinders, engine wear decreases over time exponentially, and ~80% of the life time wear occurs in the first 21 minutes of service.  For most things, that means it's "broken in" before it leaves a table, and well before it's in your hands. 

 

That's why cars don't come with break in instructions, etc.  And all of the doofy "hard break in" stuff on Youtube "work" because those engines are already broken in.  (They are also riddled with conceptual errors about things like piston rings, but that's another story.)  In big Navy diesels we still use a 16-hour break in process but no one has written anything new in that book in decades, and the risk tolerance for an engine bigger than my truck is different than a car.

 

Anyway...yeah, these things mostly break down because of manufacturing defects or design decisions, including materials, and if they're gonna go, they likely go early.  The Navy has a lot of bad lessons learned where we specified something about a bearing or other mechanical part for one design criteria like magnetic signature, then it didn't work well as a [whatever] on the other side.  

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I'm surprised more car & bike enthusiasts don't get their oil tested. So many oil threads, and peoples opinions on Oil change intervals, Oil Brands, Filter brands can be so strongly and religiously yelled from the mountain top, yet if you ask how many people have sent their oil to a lab for analysis you'd only see a few hands come up. 

 

Takes all of the guess work out of oil, oil filters and oil change intervals. 

 

I remember someone once mentioned on a VFR forum that the Gear Driven Cams in VFR's breaks down most oils faster than other engines and oil could lose it's viscosity faster.

So when I did my next oil change I sent a sample to Blackstone Labs. They reported the Viscosity was still at 10w40 levels and wear levels looked good.

That answers that.

 

Someone at Honda told me that the factory Oil filters was made by a new, cheaper company now and may not perform as well as before. So I sent an oil sample to the lab after an oil change, and they reported the oil had low insoluble readings and looked good.

That answers that. 

 

I highly recommend it. 

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Yeah, usage-patterns also make huge difference in oil-durability. Oil-analysis of my street-bikes @ 5000-miles show oil is still good and can go twice that distance. Honda's recommendation was 7500-miles or yearly whichever comes 1st, so I believe it. But on my track bikes, by 2000-miles, oil is used up. I end up changing every 20-hrs, or about 1300-1400 miles.

 

In that 1st oil-change study, testing machine measures numbers of particles and groups them by size. Seems Italian bikes ended up with more and larger particles than Japanese bikes. Could this be due to insufficient filtering? If replacement filters have same specs as OEM, perhaps they need to upgrade their standards.

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