I've never understood peoples obsession with oil type/weight/brand, etc. I am on a few truck forums and a few times when the oil question comes up I tell them about my job where I drive a 4-wheel drive truck carrying alot of weight and am off road in nasty places quite often. We put in the cheapest oil on contract and myself and others rarely change it on time. We trade these trucks in at 200k and in my 15 years we have never had an engine blow up or give any problems. Trannys and transfer cases is a different story. I've got 250k on my personal truck just putting in whatever is on sale, regular or synthetic, it don't matter. I put 20K on my little suzuki doing the same thing and it is still running fine.
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2011 Cross Roads Sunset Red
OEM short windshield, passenger backrest, crash bars, saddle bag bars, heated grips, vinyl closeouts. WD lay down licence plate.
I've never understood peoples obsession with oil type/weight/brand, etc. I am on a few truck forums and a few times when the oil question comes up I tell them about my job where I drive a 4-wheel drive truck carrying alot of weight and am off road in nasty places quite often. We put in the cheapest oil on contract and myself and others rarely change it on time. We trade these trucks in at 200k and in my 15 years we have never had an engine blow up or give any problems. Trannys and transfer cases is a different story. I've got 250k on my personal truck just putting in whatever is on sale, regular or synthetic, it don't matter. I put 20K on my little suzuki doing the same thing and it is still running fine.
I posted an old Consumer Reports article where they did a syn vs dyno test on here somewhere. First they ran a couple of New York City cabs like 50k miles on both types of oil, changing the oil every 3k. Pulled them apart and they looked identical. Neither had any problem. They repeated the test with their intervals extended to 6k miles. Pulled them apart again, both still fine.
Most people won't ride motorcycles 50k miles in their lives. All the high dollar marketing won't make a bit of difference to anything but their wallets.
I think I may have posted something like this around here before but I do have oldtimers disease and thus a good excuse.
My grandpa said that if I wanted to get rid of the warts he could take me to a warthealer. I told him that there was no point since it was a stupid hillbilly wives tale. He responded that since I felt that way he would buy a bottle of Compound W and we would go that route.
Point is who knows? The warthealer might have have worked if I had some faith in the warthealer.
If you put great stock in the magic of motor oil then the benefits you get you will ascribe to that oil and the other things you have faith in. OTOH if oil loyalty is not high on your agenda then when the feces impacts the rotating vanes you will not include oil in your list of suspects.
If you own stock in Royal Purple (and all the other caviar oil brands) this is all good news. Credit for excellence from the converted and a pass from the mensches when things go south.
Pops particular spin on the truth is I tend to not change up the mix too much. Going from one oil to the other doesn't strike me as an invitation to earth shattering chaos but it does add another variable. Why futz around with what just worked for thousands of miles?
Somewhere in the bowels of Polaris Central is a pinhead with a slide rule and a smock who gets paid to do NDT / DT on product in an effort to qualify lubricants. (Yeah right and he vacations at Disneyworld with Santa and the Easter Bunny) Anyway, between this nerd and the clowns in marketing and sales they come up with an oil that offers the best compromise of factors for a given engine and by some coincidence, it sports a Polaris / Victory logo on the label. Whoda thunkit?
I believe what the engine manufacturer specifies is not entirely an overpriced marketing ploy.
I believe that the specification defined by the manufacturer probably will not lunch the mill.
I believe that the Quaker State/ Pennzoil/ fill in the blank version of the specified oil is practically identical to whatever other fill in the blank the local auto supply has to offer.
I believe that if I have started out dumping Quaker State or whatever into the bikes gullet and I didn't blow up, then it's a reasonable assumption that dumping Quaker State or whatever in it again is not likely to cause a conflagration.
But, if I believed that Royal Purple would deliver the elixir of long life to my mill beyond the capability of non royal non purple oils then I would give my promise ring to Royal Purple instead of fill in the blanks.
My grandpa could have said that if I wanted to get rid of that bottom end noise he would get me Royal Purple.
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I got a Cross Country Tour. It's a 2012. It's red. I done some stuff to it and will do some other stuff, but there's a bunch of stuff I don't care to do.
I know some stuff but there's a bunch of stuff I don't know. There's a mess of stuff I don't want to know but gratefully I have forgotten a lot of that.
I believe what the engine manufacturer specifies is not entirely an overpriced marketing ploy.
I'm not sure I do. I bought a 5 liter jug of Yami oil at the dealer last time I was there. It cost me $20. Next to it was a jug of the Victory oil, $48. What exactly would be the difference between an air-cooled Yami engine/tranny vs an air-cooled Victory engine/tranny that calls for more than doubling the price of its oil?
Why does a Victory luggage rack cost $399 and the one in the JC Whitney catalog cost $89?
Why did Victory's stock double over the course of a year?
I didn't mean to imply that it isn't a marketing ploy. Just not entirely. There may be a little R&D in there somewhere. Sometimes these guys actually do that. Not often and not much but some.
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I got a Cross Country Tour. It's a 2012. It's red. I done some stuff to it and will do some other stuff, but there's a bunch of stuff I don't care to do.
I know some stuff but there's a bunch of stuff I don't know. There's a mess of stuff I don't want to know but gratefully I have forgotten a lot of that.
back when i was just starting out and really poor, i bought a 71 ford pinto for 1000.00 that was already worn out when i got it. i drove that pinto for 10 years putting in whatever oil was the cheapest. it was mine and my wifes only transportation for that 10 years. rarely ever did it get a change. i did have tons of problems out of that car, but, never an oil related failure.
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now , 2011 crossroads
in order of ownership, sears compact scooter, honda 305 scrambler, honda 160 dream , triumph 500 trophy trail, honda cb450, sportster, honda f750, 2nd sportster, harley flh, harley super glide, 3rd sportster, bmw k1000, harley low rider, 2nd harley super glide, harley heratage, harley road king,
thats just the street bikes!
Victory it's red
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