Any thoughts or experience on oils to use. I understand that the F4S ships with a full synthetic. My dealer recommends a blend to reduce clutch slippage. Chuck at Eastern Cycle recommends full synthetic. Any experience with clutch slippage of synthetic versus a blend.

-- scott krane (a56healey@yahoo.com), September 14, 2002

Answers

Read this site, you will find it interesting: http://www.mototuneusa.com/break_in_secrets.htm

-- o (okthomas@tir.com), September 15, 2002.

Interesting reading. It pretty much mirrors the way my dad and I would break in our newly rebuilt VW sand rail engines, which always run well and never burn oil. I think the point is to rev the thing and get some real friction going to seat the rings in the first few miles, but after that I think it's still wise to not spin the thing up too much to ensure everything is tight and properly installed. My friend had a brand new Kawasaki that had a slightly loose rod bolt, and after about 150 miles it loosened up and did all kinds of damage. The rod never came off, but it slipped upward and the piston hit the valves and pretty much hammered itself to pieces.

No synthetic oil for break-in... Hmm... I can see the arguments either way, but I think it's hard to make the case that you can't use it for break in because metal wear is going to happen in the beginning regardless of what kind of oil you use... Oil is not going to help in a rough, metal on metal contact. It's only good for filling gaps between metal that is not touching.

Synthetic blend is supposed to be for extra shearing strength. Apparently synthetic isn't good in motorcycle gearboxes. I've used synthetic for a long time and it works fine, but recently I've started running Motul 5100 which is a blend. Change it often and you'll probably be fine with whatever you use.

Clutch slippage? Don't know... It probably makes sense that a blend may help to have less slippage, but real world testing is the only way to know for sure. If you switch to a blend and the clutch stops slipping, there you go.

Andy

-- Andy Ruhl (quadreverb@yahoo.com), September 16, 2002.