[2wheelsvaga]

Hi all. I have been looking around to figure out which synthetic oil would work best with the Std 350 / Classic 350.

1) When do you recommend shifting to fully synthetic from the standard semi-synthetic oil provided by the RE service outlets?
I understand it's a good idea to let the bike use regular oil for the first few 1000 kms or so.
Should one plan to shift to fully synthetic after the first year of ownership?

2) It seems 15W-50 Motul 7100 or 300 V is generally the best. Shell Ultra also has good reviews.
I've used Ultra years ago and would like to go back to using that brand. But I'd like to hear your experiences of using synthetic oils in the Bullets. Would you recommend Motul over all other brands?
My use scenario will involve some riding in typical metropolitan city conditions. Most of the riding will, however, be for touring purposes with maximum cruising speeds of 80 to 90 kmph (with pillion and luggage).

3) Should one expect any issues with the RE people if one shifts to a non RE fully synthentic engine oil while still in the (extended) warranty period?

Thanks!

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by 2wheelsvaga

Hi all. I have been looking around to figure out which synthetic oil would work best with the Std 350 / Classic 350.

Stay with whatever Royal Enfield recommends. They have far more experience than the internet self proclaimed oil gurus.

Also, the internet although extremely outspoken on what oil to use, tends to have no research fasciliteert, speaks at best from personal experience and certainly won’t be available to help out if you suffer engine damage or additional wear due to a using a non manufacturer recommended oil.

If RE wants you to use a synthetic oil, it will specify which oil and when. Life is that simple!

Jeroen

[Roy.S]

Originally Posted by 2wheelsvaga

...
1) When do you recommend shifting to fully synthetic from the standard semi-synthetic oil.....

Never. Stick to what RE recommends. As Jeroen said, they know best.
Those simple pushrod engines will not benefit from fully synthetic oils. Your money is better spent on riding gear.

[MT_Hyderabad]

Originally Posted by 2wheelsvaga

Hi all. I have been looking around to figure out which synthetic oil would work best with the Std 350 / Classic 350.

1) When do you recommend shifting to fully synthetic from the standard semi-synthetic oil provided by the RE service outlets?
I understand it's a good idea to let the bike use regular oil for the first few 1000 kms or so.
Should one plan to shift to fully synthetic after the first year of ownership?

2) It seems 15W-50 Motul 7100 or 300 V is generally the best. Shell Ultra also has good reviews.
I've used Ultra years ago and would like to go back to using that brand. But I'd like to hear your experiences of using synthetic oils in the Bullets. Would you recommend Motul over all other brands?
My use scenario will involve some riding in typical metropolitan city conditions. Most of the riding will, however, be for touring purposes with maximum cruising speeds of 80 to 90 kmph (with pillion and luggage).

3) Should one expect any issues with the RE people if one shifts to a non RE fully synthentic engine oil while still in the (extended) warranty period?

Thanks!

All your queries would have already been discussed in the Engine oil thread, but in case they aren't let me help you:

1. You can shift to which ever oil you want after first oil change in your vehicle. This is the reason why manufacturers share the spec in the manual. Like API SL or above. This means I can use any oil that comes in that spec. It may be FS, Mineral or SS.

2. Can't help here as I do not have a bullet.

3. That is more a logistical issue. You have to negotiate with the service centre if you want to take your own oil. Manufacturers like Yamaha give you an option, they have their own FS, SS, Mineral oil brand Yamalube. You can choose from their range or take your own oil.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Stay with whatever Royal Enfield recommends. They have far more experience than the internet self proclaimed oil gurus.

Also, the internet although extremely outspoken on what oil to use, tends to have no research fasciliteert, speaks at best from personal experience and certainly won’t be available to help out if you suffer engine damage or additional wear due to a using a non manufacturer recommended oil.

There are three kind of vehicle owners in this world.

1. Those who don't read the manual and doesnt care much about vehicles, though they do an annual service at any FNG.

2. Those who read the manual and follow service schedules as per the recommendations, even after the free service and warranty is over. They prefer ASC for services.

3. Those who read the manual and want to surpass the quality standards mentioned in the manual, like using performance air filters, oil filters, FS oils, iridium spark plugs, upgrade tyres, add fuel additives and what not.

In my opinion, the latter you are on this list, more is the probability of you having a peaceful and mutually beneficial relationship with the vehicle.

Now, someone in category 1 can surpass someone in category 3 by chance, like someone in category 3 used engine oil flush (which I am completely against) and blows up a seal and the one in category 1 ran a car for 20,000 miles on a single oil and didn't do a perceivable damage to the vehicle.

I think the whole purpose of threads like TeamBhp is to help people to make an informed decision. If users think that the one trying to help is a pundit (engine oil pundit, air filter pundit, tyre upgrade pundit, detailing pundit etc etc..), then most of us fall in that category.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by MT_Hyderabad

I think the whole purpose of threads like TeamBhp is to help people to make an informed decision.

Absolutely, please do let me know if you think my content on TeamBHP is below par either in quality or quantity!

Originally Posted by MT_Hyderabad

There are three kind of vehicle owners in this world.

1. Those who don't read the manual and doesnt care much about vehicles, though they do an annual service at any FNG.

2. Those who read the manual and follow service schedules as per the recommendations, even after the free service and warranty is over. They prefer ASC for services.

3. Those who read the manual and want to surpass the quality standards mentioned in the manual, like using performance air filters, oil filters, FS oils, iridium spark plugs, upgrade tyres, add fuel additives and what not.
.

You need to add a fourth group. Those members who have (several) relevant formal engineering qualification and have hands on experience on engines research design and maintenance. Or related topics such as having run extensive lubrication test programs world wide.

Each to its own, but I need to see factual engineering explanations or substantial empirical data before I would deviated from a manual, any manual.

If you are talking empirical data on lub oil, even a car mechanic can’t tell you much. Some still do. You need to do measure at least wear and tear for an extended period of time on a number of engines.

You could choose to perform these test in a laboratory or during actual usage. Best is to do both. Actual usage requires a careful monitoring program and a way to normalise the results. You will need to pull oil samples at regular times have them analysed and interpreted for wear and tear. Prior,to the test you will need to strip down each engine you are testing and measure all components that are likely to see wear. E.g. bearings, pistons, piston rings, cilinder liners, cam shaft etc etc. Next you bolt them altogether again.

You need to figure out how often you will repeat this tear down of each engine, so you can measure the actual wear on each component and start correlation to the oil sample lab results.

Of course, lub oil does more than minimise wear and tear, so you need to think through how you would want to measure for those other functions as well.

Which internet key board oil guru has the knowledge and the means to execute all of the above?

But wait, nobody needs to worry! The car manufacturer have done all of this for you. Often in close cooperation with lub oil manufacturers and specialised research institutes.

They publish their recommendation in your car manual. Never have I understood why anybody thinks he or she knows better than the professionals who figure out this stuff for a living . They have studied hard earning different degrees, spending thousand of man hours on these sort of test, building an immense database of very detailed knowledge of the performance of Lub oil under different conditions.

So as an engineer who has researched, developed and performed extensive oil testing across a range of engines, for an extended period of time my advice is not to deviate from the owner manual.

The only way to come to any conclusions on how good or appropriate an oil is for an engine is to analyse oil samples and measure wear and tear extensively and compare to a standard or other oil.

If somebody claims “this is a good oil” ask them for the data points. If it is anything else than what I mentioned above, such a statement is highly unlikely to carry any weight.

Jeroen

[MT_Hyderabad]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Absolutely, please do let me know if you think my content on TeamBHP is below par either in quality or quantity!

You need to add a fourth group. Those members who have (several) relevant formal engineering qualification and have hands on experience on engines research design and maintenance. Or related topics such as having run extensive lubrication test programs world wide.

Which internet key board oil guru has the knowledge and the means to execute all of the above?

They publish their recommendation in your car manual. Never have I understood why anybody thinks he or she knows better than the professionals who figure out this stuff for a living . They have studied hard earning different degrees, spending thousand of man hours on these sort of test, building an immense database of very detailed knowledge of the performance of Lub oil under different conditions.

So as an engineer who has researched, developed and performed extensive oil testing across a range of engines, for an extended period of time my advice is not to deviate from the owner manual.

If somebody claims “this is a good oil” ask them for the data points

First of all, nobody is talking about your content.

All testing is done and manual prescribes API SL or above oil. I do not have to be an engineer to suggest an oil that surpass this rating. Is there any instance folks here have suggested anything that is below the manual recommended specification? Then why hate such people? What data points you want? Manual prescribes API SL or above, I recommend API SN plus. Nobody needs any data here. I own a car which recommends API SG or above oil; API SG is not available in the market, should I stop driving my car?

The fourth category you mentioned is not relevant. I was talking about consumers not members of this forum. If there is an engineer who loves his/her car, it falls in category 3 I mentioned.

On this forum, we help each other with our experience, sometimes we make recommendation that is not listed in the manual, for example, there are many recommendations for tyre upgrade; do you think these were tested on the vehicle. The weight distribution on each tyre, the body roll, the high speed stability, the suspension set up, was all done on OEM tyres, but still we end up recommending a tyre that is 2% higher than OEM. We think that 2% does not make any difference, it must be documented somewhere, just like API SN can be used in API SL recommendation is documented, but if the OEM tyre was at the edge of failure, this 2% would make a significant difference. Car manufacturer never says that you can upgrade to any high profile tyre, please share that info with me if you find it. If not, let us delete all the posts that recommend this 2% higher profile tyres as Upgrades, I have seen at least 50 such posts from members. I don't want to call them tyre pundits or key board gurus.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by MT_Hyderabad

First of all, nobody is talking about your content.

Phew, thank you, that is a relief.

Originally Posted by MT_Hyderabad

The fourth category you mentioned is not relevant. I was talking about consumers not members of this forum.

You mean TeamBHP members are not consumers? I don’t get it.

I have seen this tendency of thinking that being a TeamBHP member makes you stand out from the crowd? Makes you a fountain of knowledge when it comes to cars. Way over and above the average person.

Maybe you meant something differently?

Originally Posted by MT_Hyderabad

If there is an engineer who loves his/her car, it falls in category 3 I mentioned.
up

What about an engineer, who is also a consumer and a TeamBHP member.
I am an engineer (pretty average I think), I am also a consumer (pretty good at spending money my wife tells me) and I am also a TeamBHP member.

I only own 6 cars and each one of them is, down to the last detail, completely original as per the manufacturer description. I spend an extraordinary amount of my time and a huge portion of our money on making sure they all are as original as I can keep them. No upgrade over and beyond those mentioned in the option list, thank you very much!

Did I mention engineer can be quite a boring bunch? It’s always the guys without the technical knowledge that try out all this crazy stuff!

But seriously, my point is: there is lots of stuff that you can learn from the internet and certainly this forum. We have some wonderful deeply technical threads. E.g. the DSG thread springs to mind.

Advising on what Lub oil to use is of a very different category.

It appears you and I agree on one thing, follow the manual. Sorry if that was not clear from my earlier post. Discussing lub oil is a bit of a waving a red flag in a bulls face (mine) I’m afraid. Can’t help myself, I will charge! Sorry about that.

But we have a a few threads on oil, with hundreds if not thousands of post. And when you read through it, you will notice very few people will tell you to stick to the manufacturer recommendations.

Maybe you and I should ask the mod to delete all those pages of well meant advice. Instead we will introduce the shortest thread on TeamBHP.

We will call it “what lub oil?”

It will have one reply from you and or me:

“Consult the manual”

Then the mods can close the thread. problem solved!

We might want to add: applicable for both TeamBHP members and Consumers.
.
Jeroen

[Roy.S]

I know that Mr. Jeroen has owned a CI Bullet when he lived in India. No idea if he tried to use fully synthetic oil but it would probably be a bad idea. I own a Classic 500 and once I had to use fully synthetic oil because we were in a state of semi lockdown and there was no other option. The only difference was that the bike felt marginally quieter but there wasn't any improvement otherwise. These ancient engines just don't benefit from the expensive fully synthetic oils or any type of additive. Its akin to casting pearls at a swine.
OP asked a specific set of questions and some of them were answered. Perhaps the answers were not what was expected but not everything needs discussion and pontification.
I do use fully synthetic in my cars (Swift and I20) and the difference is palpable. I think higher end cars come filled with fully synthetic from the factory. I could be wrong here, though.

[MT_Hyderabad]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

It will have one reply from you and or me:

“Consult the manual”

I think I have contributed to the thread sufficiently enough and kept it to the point. If I continue with our discussion, it would be considered spamming.

Let us get back to the original question from the OP. The owner's manual recommends only Royal Enfield oil. If we go by the manual, no other oil can be used; completely disregarding Competetion Act 2002. They have all the right to charge exorbitant pricing from the consumers who are left with no other option. Let this be taken up by oil companies with them. RE can easily counter by saying that it is just a recommendation and not a mandate!

OP's bike is married to the RE oil, no exploring, no outside food for him.

[rakesh_r]

Originally Posted by 2wheelsvaga

1) When do you recommend shifting to fully synthetic from the standard semi-synthetic oil provided by the RE service outlets?

Have had two Enfields, a classic 500 and a Himalayan. My experience, the bike was quite happy with semi synthetic RE recommended grade specs, nothing more nothing less.

[Gansan]

Synthetic oils for older generation vehicles may not help much, but will not hurt. Provided one does not mind the cost. It will be like feeding a race horse diet to a mule, more or less! But it is our mule, our decision!

Stick to whatever oil RE workshop provides till the warranty period is over. After that it is your call. Just ensure the oil spec mentioned in the owner's manual is matched, whether the oil is synthetic/semi synthetic/mineral.

[hserus]

API SL isn’t as relevant as the JASO MA for a wet clutch bike’s oil. There is no mention of fully or semi synthetic, or mineral here. As long as you use a 15w50 oil compatible with JASO MA or successor specification, you should be fine. It is perfectly fine to have API SL for the higher phosphorus content in the oil (.1% rather than .08 or lower for successor specifications) given the vintage of this particular engine. And yes a Xw50 oil, whether that is 10,15 or 20 at the lower end of this range is only going to matter if the bike is taken to somewhere the temperature falls below -20 or so C.

There is no manufacturer specific spec here like BMW, Ford or many other manufacturers have for there to be any significant change or difference from using one brand or the other that matches an industry wide spec for wet clutch motorcycles.

[Roy.S]

What I really want to know and have wondered about for a while is this: would using a regular mineral oil be bad for the engine? I suppose the CI Bullets would be fine because they are from the era where mineral oil was the norm. What effect, if any would this have on the UCE engines?

[ebonho]

Originally Posted by Roy.S

What I really want to know and have wondered about for a while is this: would using a regular mineral oil be bad for the engine? I suppose the CI Bullets would be fine because they are from the era where mineral oil was the norm. What effect, if any would this have on the UCE engines?

There is ZERO difference between a mineral dino oil and a synthetic one if both are the same grade. The drain interval is only longer. And you pay a lot (too much?) for that.

[Sam800]

I don't own a RE but i do own a carb 1995 M800. The engine required 20W50 engine oil at one time which is not available for car now a days.
I've used mineral, semi synthetic, synthetic and molygen (liquimoly) oils.
And i found out-

The best- molygen 10W40.
Felt like a 4cyl engine and 30% less noise and vibrations, better pickup)

All rounder - Semi Synthetic (Shell HX7 15W40)
(Far better than mineral, but almost close to fully synthetic)

The good- Fully synthetic (mobil) . Don't remember the exact name

I know my is car and yours is a bike, there's no comparison here, but both engines can be termed as old school.

In the end, your engine won't harm with synthetics, whatever the effect will be, it will be only better than semi synthetic.
If you don't experience much change physically (pickup, vibrations) atleast you'll be getting a bit higher change intervals and kilometres, but at a lil premium cost as synthetics are costlier than semi synthetic.

Try synthetic oil once, if you feel its not worth it, switch to semi synthetic. No harm. Both of them are anyways better than mineral oils which vehicles used at one time.