Well, guys quik but honest question:

Can you use car oil in these bikes without hurting anything? I am talking about synthetic 10w40, or does it have to be Honda lube or something special? Thanks again,
Daniel

 

The consensus seems to be that car oil is a no go. The oil also lubes the clutches and as it was explained to me the deturgents in most oil can cause them harm. So if you want it to last buy motorcycle specific oil.

 

Not the detergents, but the friction modifiers....in general anyway. The viscosity improvers in car oils won't hold up in the gear box either.

Rotella T synthetic 5w40 is good (blue bottle, walmart for $15/gallon), Mobil 1 20w50 synthetic are both suitable "car" oils that are readily available. Rotella 15w-40 in the white bottle is not synthetic, is cheaper and won't harm your clutches.

Your choices of "bike oil" are boundless. If you ask for opinions here, you'll get a lot of them. Most of them are good, however, I've had bad luck with Motul and clutches glazing up in drag racing applications.

 

Well there it is, right message, wrong vocabulary. I am here to learn too, sorry if I confused anyone.

 

Honda recommends Honda GN4 or HP4 without molybdenum additives.
I use the GN4 and my bike runs SMOOOOOOTH with it.

 

There's a really great site where someone has done quite a bit of research regarding oil. Probably more than you want to know. It's very educational. Then you can form your own opinion. It takes a lot of the myths out of it.

http://www.calsci.com/motorcycleinfo/Oils1.html

For what it's worth, I too use Rotella T synthetic 5w40 in both my 1000F and my wifes 600 F3.

 

So the Rotella and the Mobil 1 synthetics are good? Car oils correct?


The reason I ask was because I didn't know if these bikes are like ATVs that the oil also lubes the clutches(obviously from the above posts). I always used Mobil 1 synthetic 10w30 in my Yamaha's (warrior & raptor) so is this suitable for these bikes too?

 

It also appears that diesel oil is acceptable to run in these engines, correct?

 

HOGWASH!!!!

I had 78k miles on my F3and it wasstill a very trackworthy bike( I sure do miss that bike ). My buddy has85k+ (maybe he's even past 90k now). We both use auto oils. I use Mobil115W50. My buddy uses some cheap supermarket auto oil.

Auto oils are fine as long as they are not labelled as Energy Conserving. Its the Energy Conserving oils that allow wet clutches to slip.

A bike doesn't *need* a motorcycle-specific oil to last a long time. That's just marketing hype from the manufacturers of motorcycle oil.


You can't just randomly pick an oil. While any non-Energy Conserving oil will work in a motorcycle, you still need to pick one that is a suitable viscosity for where you ride.

For example, as mentioned earlier, I use Mobil 1 15W50. This is fine for me because I don't live in an area where it gets too cold (15W50 only works efficiently down to about 30 deg F or so). This would not be a good choice for someone who does winter riding in a cold area (e.g. northeast states).

So you also need to make sure you choose an auto oil that also has the right viscosity.

 

I wouldn't use a diesel oil in these bikes.