30W Non-detergent - Or is there something better?

[sotxbill]

You can polish a turd so much and it's still a turd. Can we just go by the manufactures recumendation and use 30 wt. oil.

What does your owners manual say to use?? Or do you go by the stamping on the case from 1959??

Your bike.. you put in anything you want. Dont be confused by the facts or Honda or Industry tests specifically for motorcycles, or the owners manual. Dont especially go by what honda said in 1968 after analyzing the wear on the bikes vrs the oils used.

Some folks live life by emotion and others live by facts. We used to burn witches simply becuase they used new muti-weight oil in their bikes er brooms...

Again,, put anything you want in YOUR bike.

[jleewebb]

You can polish a turd so much and it's still a turd. Can we just go by the manufactures recumendation and use 30 wt. oil.

Hey Chico, can you post a picture of that polished turd?

[Gun]

I tried to answer spargetts question too. using time tested methods.

I'm sure new oil is top of the line. But these basically ARE lawn mower engines. they are old they are small, they are simple. I see no LOGICAL reason to put anything else in these engines. The question was 'is there anything BETTER?' not 'which oil has what viscosity and what length are its strands'. You define better by it's scientific properties and ability to lubricate. I define better by what is most practical and time tested.

What is disheartening is that you are suggesting there is only one better;
as if better is an objective term, which you have written down in a book in front of you clearly explaining the very nature of better. But I dare say what makes a better oil in your opinion doesn't make a better donut. If 'better' doesn't even define the same values and qualities between different objects, how can 'better' be one idea? I already went into what a cb77 would look like if we applied your 'better' to it entirely... disk brakes, temp gauges, heated grips, aerodynamic fairings, bored out, liquid cooled, fuel injected, etc.... if you're talking about peak performance or technical specs (which you keep suggesting I back up my argument with) being the only interpretation of 'better' then I simply don't know why you purchased a 305cc 1960's honda instead of a sports bike. These are basically large scooters. I love them, but lets not pretend they are performance machines.
There certainly are things that we the rider will interpret better as being performance related... and oil very well may be one of them. It certainly would be to me if i had encountered any problem with the 30w oil. I haven't... and so it's not. So my 'better' regarding this is based on other factors.

edit: so to answer spartgetts question in my opinon,
There are oils out there that are technically superior. However, the engine wasn't designed to run on those oils, I have seen no data showing benefits of running new oils over the 30w in THESE engines. To me, any slight performance increase from changed oil isn't worth it because this is not a peak performance machine and all we DO have on paper is over four decades of these engines running successfully on the 30w. If someone wants to do a side by side comparison and put 20k miles on two identical bikes with different oils and post the results here, I'd be happy to reconsider if the benefits were huge, and cost wasn't a factor to me.

[Gun]

You can polish a turd so much and it's still a turd. Can we just go by the manufactures recumendation and use 30 wt. oil.

What does your owners manual say to use?? Or do you go by the stamping on the case from 1959??

Your bike.. you put in anything you want. Dont be confused by the facts or Honda or Industry tests specifically for motorcycles, or the owners manual. Dont especially go by what honda said in 1968 after analyzing the wear on the bikes vrs the oils used.

Some folks live life by emotion and others live by facts. We used to burn witches simply becuase they used new muti-weight oil in their bikes er brooms...

Again,, put anything you want in YOUR bike.

I'll level with you. I wish you'd cut the ad hominem attacks. They are childish. and this coming from a loose canon know-it-all 26 year old gunning from the hip.

You judge better by technical superiority on paper.
I judge better by 40 year history of success.

I bet my dog would run better on nothing but straight sirloin steak and purified mountain spring water.
However, she'll continue to consume dog food and tap water.
that's better to me.

[conbs]

The passion of those posting is part of what has made this thread so intereting.... and so long.

My point is that there is that "science" may not tell us all because scinece doesn't know it all.

Vinyl records may sound better, but I haven't found a way to e-mail them yet. I can download any digital recording or e-mail them to anyone. They have utility - as a method to transmit sound - that vinyl will never enjoy.

But, the analog recording on vinyl has MORE information than a digital recording. If record a signal from a vinyl recording into the digital realm like a CD, the digital recording would be at its full potential, but still be missing some of the information that was on the vinyl. If I then record that digital recording back onto vinyl it will not have all of the information that was on the original vinyl recording. It loses something in the translation.

Back to oil. Is there something about the natural polymer chains that might provide benefits that can not be acheived with modern or synthetic oils? I don't know the answer. For those who are quick to say, "Well, the science proves...." maybe we don't have all the tests to measure everything we might want to know. Case in point: Redwood seconds have now been replaced with Saybolt seconds (or whatever it is).

In my mind natural substances almost always have benefits that get removed in extensive processing or that synthesized substances can't match. Limiting refined sugars and refined carbohydrates generally leads to better health.

I am really intrigued by the technical information that has been shared on this thread regarding modern oils. So much so that I copied down information about what modern oils I might want to use. But, Gun is right that 305's are not performance machines in the modern sense. From that standpoint, it seems like no one should dismiss the potential for regular old 30w to do things for these old machines that modern oils can't do. It is most likely that we don't know everything there is to know about oil and lubrication. Only what "science" has figured out so far.

[Vince Lupo]

Not that I feel like wading back in on this issue, but I beg to differ when you're saying that the SuperHawk is not a high performance machine. For an engine of this size to have the performance figures that it had at the time, I'd say that this is entirely a high performance machine. This bike was known as a 'giant killer' in its day, and would probably put many a 500 to shame (and maybe some 650's as well). Plus, when you have a machine whose redline is 9200 rpm, and has a 105-110mph top speed for its size, I wouldn't exactly call that a lawn mower. Every major motorcycle magazine of the era would have disagreed as well. And because of that level of performance, why not use the best possible oil that you can get now?

Further, I was just informed by a mechanical colleague of mine that "a CB72 from 1963 had a 94.5 hp/1000 cc and that a Ferrari 250S from 1960 has 93,4 hp/1000cc. That means that the CB72 is a higher performance engine than a Ferrari."

Something to think about, but not necessarily something you need to agree with.....

[chico]

I wrote what I wrote only to inject a little humor into thread that was becoming a little to serious and argumentative. I found the studies presented way past my 12th grade education. I just want simple answers to my simple questions, what was my impression that this forum was for. I wont post again until I finish a quantum physics course, get my electrical engineering degree, get a PHD in theory and become a mechanical expert. i'm sorry my humor is below you mensa members.