Maybe when gas sold for 50-75¢ per gallon, taxis would sit at taxi stands with the engine running. But no longer!
At todays prices for gasoline, taxi drivers shut them off whenever they have to wait more than a few minutes.
Heck, they do that even here in Minnesota, in the middle of our winter! They only run the engine every 10-15 minutes, when the car starts getting too cold.
Taxi drivers have to be very aware of gasoline costs, if they want to survive in the business.
The study that this line of discussion sprang from was done over ten years ago.
As to current practices relative to the price of fuel, saving gas money may or may not offset extra costs for engine wear, starter wear, etc…
I want to clear up a few points here that I think have gotten muddled.
Are all oils of the exact same weight identical?
The correct answer is either an emphatic NO or there is not enough information given to give a correct answer.
The part of the information that is missing is the quality rating (PDF!) of the oil.
Let’s say that you have a 2004 MY car that the owner’s manual calls for 10W-30. You go to the auto parts store and find several different brands of 10W-30 oil. You choose two to look at. Both are 10W-30, however one costs say a buck more a quart. What is the difference? Well look close the cheap one is rated API SD, the more expensive one is rated API SL. Looking at the link above, SD is obsolete for cars built after 1971! SD!= SL. Using an inferior quality oil in a modern engine is asking for trouble. Before yo ask, yes, you can buy SD rated oil. Hell if look you can find SA oil. Now assuming that you are talking about the same quality rating of oil, and the same grade, then different brands are equal.
RTFM people, the guys that wrote that manual know way more about your engine than the kid with pimples at the Iffy Lube. Use the weight and quality that your care maker tells you to.
I have seen cases were customers had changed their oil on a regular basis, and the engine got gunked up beyond all belief. Why? Inferior grade of oil.
As far as the question of what weight to use goes, modern engine have lots of very small oil passeges for things like hydraulic lifters, Variable valve timing, varible lift cams etc. If you put too heavy an oil in there, it won’t flow fast enough, and you can get oil starvation, just as if you did not have enough oil in the crankcase. The guy that designed your engine knows more about it than you do, follow his suggestions.
Rick:
It depends. My motorcycle redlines at 16,000 RPM and produces about 200bhp per litre. Yet, the manufacturer (Yamaha) recommends API SE, SF, SG or better.
I personaly use a monograde SAE 40 API SG
What about using car oil in a motorcycle? My 1994 Yamaha has used oil since it was new. 80,000 and it still uses the same – about a half-pint every 600 miles or so. Since I rode the hell out of it, I took to carrying a quart of Yamalube in my backpack. But what if I found myself without my quart and the oil light came on while I was away from a motorcycle shop (or on a day they were closed)? Could I add some regular automotive oil of the same rating without worrying about damaging anything?
(Sort of a moot point, since I got the R1; but I’ve been known to loan out the Seca.)
I’ve heard from professional mechanics that Pennzoil is lousy, but I don’t know of any studies that prove this or not. And I was surprised some months ago to see that non-detergent motor oil is still available. What you’d use it for, I’ve no idea, but it pays to look at the label closely.
Aircraft engines use straight mineral oil (i.e., non-detergent) for break-in. After that, they use ashless dispersant (detergent).
I’ve heard that long-term use of Pennzoil leaves sulphur deposits in the engine interior. Wish I knew for certain if that’s true.
What is your point? You are running a quality grade that your engine maker recomonds “API service grade SE, SF, SG or higher”
As far as the mono weight vs multigrade the engine oil you are using is OK assuming your ambient temp is very hot, if you run the bike in very cold weather you might have oil starvation at start up.
I have a very interesting video at my training center from Valvoline. They took 3 identical engines and put clear plexiglass valve covers on them. The filled one with 20W-50 oil, one with 10W-30 of an inferior grade, and the last with 10W-30 with the (then) current quality rating. They put all three engines in a deep freeze over night at -26F.
The next morning they started them up with cameras rolling.
The high quality 10W-30 started flowing from the rocker shaft in about 30 seconds. The inferior quality 10W-30 took about a minute, and when it came out of the wheep holes int he rockers, it looked like soft serve ice cream Crystals could clearly be seen.
The 20W-50? At 30 minutes into the test, no oil had come out of the rocker shaft. The test was terminated as all they were doing was destroying the engine.
My point about oil weight is directed at owners who go 100% against the car makers’s recomondations. For example Ford uses 0W-20 oil for their engines. If you put straight 40 weight in one of these engines there will be trouble.
Rick: Which oil should I use in my B? The handbook lists the following for temperatures down to 41ºF:
[ul][li]Duckham’s Q.20/50[/li][li]Castrol XL[/li][li]Sternol W.W. 40[/li][li]Mobiloil A.F.[/li][li]Mobiloil B.B.[/li][li]Esso Motor Oil 40[/li][li]Esso Extra Motor Oil 20W/40[/li][li]Filtrate Heavy[/li][li]Filtrate 20W/50[/li][li]BP Energol SAE 40[/li][li]Shell Super Motor Oil[/li][li]Shell X 100 40[/li][li]Shell X 100[/li][li]Shell Multigrade 20W/40[/ul][/li]Of course it was written over 40 years ago. Should I still use 20W/40 or 20W/50? Or have advances in lubrication technology over the past few decades resulted in a better choice? When I get back home, should I change the oil to 10W/40 for the winter, since it gets down to freezing? Or will newer oils protect the engine throughout the year? (The engine has been rebuilt.)
Johnny It it were me, I would run 20W-50 here in So cal during the summer, and in winter (or when the car is in the Northlands) run the 10W-40
With the B you have a real advantage, you have a mechanical oil pressure guage, you can watch the drop in oil pressure as the temp rises. On second thought this may not be a good thing. 
Any of the oils listed are fine (good luck finding Duck butter here in So Cal) If it were me I would go with a good SJ or SL quality oil.
:smack: Just went back and re-read your post. I didn’t see the 20W-40. I just saw the W-40 and assumed the first part was 10. :smack:
I don’t know about the availability of 20W-40, I know 15W-40 is available, and for near freezing the 10W or 15W would probably be a perfectly fine sub.
Thanks, Rick. Still have a couple of months before I have to worry about it…
Interesting post Rick. Would all three of the engines have registered acceptable oil pressure? Even during winter (around zero is as cold as it gets) there’s at most a three to five second delay before oil pressure shows on the gauge.
I don’t recall them mentioning that in the film, so I am guessing the engine with the current version of 10W-30 probably, the one with the older version of 10W-30 possibly, the 20W-50 I’m guessing not. What I think happened is that the 20W-50 was too thick to pull through the screen on the oil pump pickup, and the pump just cavitated.
Come on now for whoever mentioned this----
You might accidentally buy an SD oil instead of SL?
Shit ----I haven’t seen SD oil in over 30 years.
That just doesn’t happen. Sale of 30 year old oil.
What you buy today in the ordinary auto parts store is SL. No matter the brand.
Car oils have anti-friction additives (usually Molybdenum disulfide AKA moly). Too much of those and the clutch (which in most motorcycles is “wet”) will start slipping. Oils that are suitable for wet clutched motorcycles have the specification JASO MA written somewhere on the back of the bottle, those that aren’t suitable have JASO MB. Problem is, most car oil makers don’t bother putting the JASO specification on the bottle.
Another concern is that if the oil has too many detergents, it will soften the friction material on the clutch plates and turn them to a pulp and then all kinds of hell will break loose inside the engine. Oils specifically made for diesel engines are ladden with strong detergents. Oils suitable for “mixed fleets” might also have stronger-than-usual detergents.
If you avoid buying expensive and fancy-looking oils, bets are that there isn’t any moly or too many detergents in it so you can safely use it in the motorcycle.
My 2000 R6 also uses a lot of oil. About 0.5l for every 1000km. In a vain effort to reduce oil consumption, I have tried several different oils ranging from the cheapest mineral to the most expensive fully synthetic including some additives that claim reduced oil consumption.
My findings:
-Synthetics and semi-synthetics for some reason get consumed really really fast.
-Anti-consumption additives do work, but they do not totally eliminate the problem so I stopped using them.
-I’ve never encountered clutch slippage problems. All oils I’ve tried were car oils.
Well ombre the last time this subject came up, (about 6 months ago) I went to Canadian Tire and found SA, SD, SE, SF, SG, SL and only one SM rated oil. Yes I found some non-detergent straight 30 weight rated SA. So as of 6 months ago what I posted was a true statement.
I just got back from the local parts house, and all I could find in 10W-30 was SG, SL and SM. So either Pep Boys cares a little more about what you put into your car than some people do, or there has been a big revolution in what is available on a retail level in the last 6 months.
You pick.
Sorry, I was refering to this line from your first post: Using an inferior quality oil in a modern engine is asking for trouble.
According to the API Motor Oil Guide (Warning PDF!) all those three specifications are obsolete. One would think that a high revving, powerful engine like that of the R6 would require the best (=most expensive) oil available, but according to the manual it isn’t so.
I lied, it was 8 months ago in this thread
