Oil for XS

[Biffo]

Thanks everyone. I eventually found our local oil manufacturer's recommendation on their website. The oil selection computer in the store didn't go back far enough for my bike. Penrite MC4T 20W50 mineral oil. That's what I'll be using from now on.

 

[kshansen]

Hi Jeffrey,
Gawd! That write-up has about the highest hype-density I've ever seen in one place.
Sieving out the superlatives leaves us with:-
It's as good as good mineral oil, lasts twice as long and costs three times as much.
As the XS650 engine chews up synthetic oil just as quick as it chews up mineral oil you don't get to use the synth's longevity.
Which in turn means you are throwing away $8 each time you recycle a quart.

Plus how many of these bikes are going to have a ton of miles put on them? I'm thinking only a few will be seeing over a couple thousand a year. And if you are located up where the snow flies like many of us are the bike will be parked at least a couple months a year. So it would be good practice to do an annual oil change. Hard to think that even the cheapest oil meeting the spec's for a wet clutch application would be worn out in that amount of time.

Not suggesting that one abuse one of these engines like I did for my work bike. But ran that bike for more or less 20 years doing short, one mile run each way, cold starts with hard acceleration morning and afternoon. Never kept track of when I changed oil but doubt it was more than half a dozen times! Did top it off on rare occasions using a diesel rated 15W40 I could get for free from work.

My thinking is if that engine stood up to that kind of abuse and still came back for more running fresh conventional oil with it changed every couple thousand miles and doing a proper warm up that engine would out live me. As it is it was still running just fine the last day I rode that bike to work in 2015!

 

[Jeffrey]

I think that Fred has a good point here. The real benefit of synthetic lube is that it holds its properties for so long but the 650 has such a primitive "filtration" system and and tends to use a little oil - so who cares about longevity? It just isn't that important - on OUR bikes.

Point well taken, just reinforcing the already voiced opinions that there are synthetics suitable for motorcycles if one chooses to go that route. Now, for my Duke, I wouldn't use anything but full synthetic. Whole different animal. Nothing like a good oil thread to get people going!

 

[MaxPete]

ok - but just to reinforce: you do NOT want any oil - synthetic or mineral-based - that has that "Energy / Resource Conserving" API label on it (see photo below). If that label is on the bottle, any wet clutch bike can suffer a damaged clutch.

Instead - for your bike you want to see something like this (note that the API Service Designator label does not mention energy or resource conserving):

Cheers,

Pete

 

[TwoManyXS1Bs]

Do a forum search on "JASO".