Energy Conserving Oil.

[ActionStarCBRxx]

Are we just making this shit up? I'm not disputing the fact that many have used them with no problems. I'm just not one of them. All I'm saying is go ahead and roll the dice as long as you're prepared if it happens to come up craps. I'm not preaching not to use auto oils, just make sure you know what's in them.

Am I saying that you folks who've experienced this are pathological liars, or deluded? No....I'm saying that I'm willing to believe there's another cause, and that I really don't know the answer. See...you read this far to find out that I don't know any more about it than you do. Cool, huh?

I know there are a lot of engineers (say that with a hard "g" please) out there who can quote formulas about friction, and oil, and clutch plate deangification relative to the phase of the moon...please don't bother. It wouldn't help in any way, or hold up against or for my argument...because I made it all up this morning while sipping my coffee. Your theories won't work in MY universe.

***

I want to come work as an apprentice in your universe!! Is there a special gateway or special food that needs to be digested?? :icon_think:

Great Post!! way to put everything in perspective!! Everything is food for thought, and you provided a buffet.

Thanks!

[bartonmd]

Are we just making this shit up? I'm not disputing the fact that many have used them with no problems. I'm just not one of them. All I'm saying is go ahead and roll the dice as long as you're prepared if it happens to come up craps. I'm not preaching not to use auto oils, just make sure you know what's in them.

Point 1.

I think we really have to look for other causative factors in many instances here. My buddy and I rebuilt a VW engine, broke it in on dino oil, and switched it over Mobil synthetic. That's when the clutch started slipping. Was it the Mobil 1? No, of course not...its a dry clutch, and the seal didn't leak. The clutch slipped because of our willingness, after changing the break-in oil, to explore the horsepower of the new engine, coupled with a well polished clutch disk, and a pressure plate that wasn't built for more horsepower than stock. The point is, things are not always what you think...look further for an explanation.

Point 2.

I mean, we discuss oil in regards to the clutches as if dino oil has sandpaper in it, or some marvelous miracle ingredient that makes it, at the extremes of pressure and heat, and just the right place and time, suddenly become a super stick-em. It does that, but not in a motor thats gonna run for long, fellahs. Truth is, oil ain't nowhere near that smart. Regular dinosaurs already contributed a nice long chain carbon molecule to the machinery industry, and its those long molecular chains that give oil its ability to maintain a layer of lubricant. Synthetic oils are copies of those long strings made in a controlled environment with stronger chemical bonds that resist the fracturing of those strings under repetitive heat cycles.....and that's the worth of synthetic oil....longer change intervals. The same additives that help keep contaminants in suspension and buffer the acidity of those contaminants is added to both dino and regular oils.

So does that mean that synth oil isn't slippery-er than dino oil? No, I'm not suggesting that. But if it were THAT much more slippery than regular oil, we'd not only need a different engine technology to use it, but there wouldn't be anyone NOT using it. Manufactures would murder for a way to decrease internal friction loss by even 20%....the cost savings would be astounding. There's nothing to indicate that synthetic oil is the holy grail, by any means.

Point 3.

I look at the way a modern wet clutch works, and truly wonder how changing the oil could make a difference in its performance. I mean, you'd need grease in there to screw it up. Those plates are made with stuff called friction material bonded right to them. Its designed and purposely made not to slip...while running in an oil bath. There's grooves and channels made to handle the oil flow and allow the clutch to work properly in that environment. So what is it about using synthetic oil that would cause a clutch to slip?

Look at what makes something like a clutch plate grip or grab. What makes friction? Well...the lack of a smooth surface, right? Look at a road. Its chock full of little holes and hills that your rubbery, bendy tire surface can just mold right into....creating a grip..or friction. You know that's so...because you've all had the oportunity to ride on a very smooth section of pavement or concrete (maybe not on a road, but an access approach, or just a small area patch, cuz engineers are generally smarter than that) and noticed that puckery effect around your butt when you suddenly slipped or spun a tire...because your friction went away. Wouldn't want oil on that, would you? Hell, NO! But here's the thing....with deep enough hills and valleys on the "microsurface" of that concrete patch, you could put a layer of oil on it and see no difference in the friction component....and that's exactly the design of a wet clutch.

Assembling all this----point 3 says a wet clutch should work no matter what oil is used, point 2 says that synth is not incredibly more slippery than dino oil, and point 1 suggests you not assume the oil is the culprit if your clutch is slipping.

If your clutch is marginal, either with worn plates or tired springs, its certainly conceivable that your clutch might slip. If your clutch is operating at 8.2 kg/square inch of pressure when it needs 8.0 kg to meet the necessary coefficient of friction and your oil change decreases friction by 5%.....its gonna slip.

Am I saying that you folks who've experienced this are pathological liars, or deluded? No....I'm saying that I'm willing to believe there's another cause, and that I really don't know the answer. See...you read this far to find out that I don't know any more about it than you do. Cool, huh?

I know there are a lot of engineers (say that with a hard "g" please) out there who can quote formulas about friction, and oil, and clutch plate deangification relative to the phase of the moon...please don't bother. It wouldn't help in any way, or hold up against or for my argument...because I made it all up this morning while sipping my coffee. Your theories won't work in MY universe.

ah... I don't know what they're talking about, but I'm not talking about synthetic oil vs. regular oil, or even car oil vs. bike oil, but specifically the car oils with the friction modifiers in them to make them "energy conserving", because by their very name, they modify (reduce) friction. They do this by the additives filling voids in porus materials (like clutch friction, or steel plates, for instance), and making them more slick.

BTW, The old clutch plates were well within tolerance, it waited 1000 miles before slipping, after I changed the oil, and I used the old springs with the new clutch plates with zero problems to this day, 20,000 miles later...

Mike

[Guest rockmeupto125]

Oil thread. Anything goes.

Mike...I'm using a monitor from the regular universe. Why would the picture sag down in the middle? Is the backside of the glass too slippery or something? I just noticed this since I changed to FireFox 2.0.

***

I want to come work as an apprentice in your universe!! Is there a special gateway or special food that needs to be digested?? :icon_think:

Great Post!! way to put everything in perspective!! Everything is food for thought, and you provided a buffet.

Thanks!

Come over Friday. We're having fish in the deep fryer and then we are going to do a valve adjustment on a chicken.

[bartonmd]

Oil thread. Anything goes.

Mike...I'm using a monitor from the regular universe. Why would the picture sag down in the middle? Is the backside of the glass too slippery or something? I just noticed this since I changed to FireFox 2.0.

I see... is your monitor sitting on a magnet??

Solution: Use a monitor not from the regular universe...

Mike

[Guest rockmeupto125]

I see... is your monitor sitting on a magnet??

Well...I am quite attractive.........but that's normal. This just started. Maybe the backglass friction coefficient has changed.

Ahhh........its colder! That makes electricity better! I knew it.

See...there's always an answer.

[tomek]

Every single oil is a friction modifier.I love Internet "Science"

It looks like they used friction modifier at the finish line of Chicago Marathon last Sunday.

[bartonmd]

Every single oil is a friction modifier.I love Internet "Science"

It looks like they used friction modifier at the finish line of Chicago Marathon last Sunday.

Yes, we're way past that... we're talking about modifiers that modify the friction of the oil (usually done by having small particles (like moly, for instance) that fill small voids in materials, making them even slicker than if they had oil alone on them)...

I saw that! What a bunch of fucking dumbasses! Who wants to be that they get sued?

Mike

[EVLXX]

Copied this from another site...

"You can change your oil every 3,000 miles if you're really particular, but we recommend changing it every 5,000 miles," commented Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the erudite grease-monkey hosts of the popular National Public Radio program "Car Talk," on a show last year. "If you change it more often, you are just wasting your money and creating a disposal problem," they noted. They are considering revising their recommendation to 7,500 miles. Synthetic oils, because of their better properties, need to be changed less often, at intervals up to 25,000 miles or more. In the end, the best advice on the type of oil to use and the frequency of oil changes is to follow the manufacturer's recommendation in your car owner's manual.

Chemical & Engineering News

[Pete in PA]

Lets get something straight, 90 PPM is nothing for moly content. Maxima Maxum ultra (a motorcycle oil) has 380 PPM. So the MX4T was not your problem.

Torco T-4SR has almost 600 PPM of moly.

Honda's "moly free" oil has 71 PPM of moly.

I'm still doing power wheelies so my clutch is still good.

[bartonmd]

Lets get something straight, 90 PPM is nothing for moly content. Maxima Maxum ultra (a motorcycle oil) has 380 PPM. So the MX4T was not your problem.

Torco T-4SR has almost 600 PPM of moly.

Honda's "moly free" oil has 71 PPM of moly.

I'm still doing power wheelies so my clutch is still good.

I've been using MX4T for quite some time with no problems, in both the Nighthawk and XX... It was Jeff that had issues while using it.

Mike

[shovelstrokeed]

Just a data point on the long curve of this thread.

Back when I was running my nitrous bike, I had a slider clutch in it. For those of you who have never seen or heard of one, it is a full centrifugal clutch (no lever). You set these clutches up by varying spring pressure (which holds the clutch disengaged) and balancing that against weights on lever arms which, as the motor gains RPM, force the plates into engagement. They are known for their consistency and ability to repeat launch characteristics. I still have some old data sheets around somewhere that show 20 runs of between 8.08 and 8.17 seconds in the quarter. This, over 4 sessions at the track on different days/nights, so you could say the bike was consistent.

Switched one day from the Torco 5w20 dino oil I had been running in the motor to a similar weight synthetic from the same folks. The bike fell off into the high 8.40's and the 60' times rose from the low 1.20's to the mid 1.30's. That difference is dramatic. There was no other change to the thing but the oil. Went back to the dino oil after one session but, I wound up having to change all the friction plates to get back where I was.

My conclusion, that particular synthetic certainly did change the friction characteristic of the clutch on that particular bike. It actually does make sense. Now, that bike made a pretty good amount of power and was not all that light at around 430 lbs. Interesting other point is that the mph never did fall off very much so the clutch wasn't actually slipping, just a different friction characteristic.

[Pete in PA]

Just a data point on the long curve of this thread.

Back when I was running my nitrous bike, I had a slider clutch in it. For those of you who have never seen or heard of one, it is a full centrifugal clutch (no lever). You set these clutches up by varying spring pressure (which holds the clutch disengaged) and balancing that against weights on lever arms which, as the motor gains RPM, force the plates into engagement. They are known for their consistency and ability to repeat launch characteristics. I still have some old data sheets around somewhere that show 20 runs of between 8.08 and 8.17 seconds in the quarter. This, over 4 sessions at the track on different days/nights, so you could say the bike was consistent.

Switched one day from the Torco 5w20 dino oil I had been running in the motor to a similar weight synthetic from the same folks. The bike fell off into the high 8.40's and the 60' times rose from the low 1.20's to the mid 1.30's. That difference is dramatic. There was no other change to the thing but the oil. Went back to the dino oil after one session but, I wound up having to change all the friction plates to get back where I was.

My conclusion, that particular synthetic certainly did change the friction characteristic of the clutch on that particular bike. It actually does make sense. Now, that bike made a pretty good amount of power and was not all that light at around 430 lbs. Interesting other point is that the mph never did fall off very much so the clutch wasn't actually slipping, just a different friction characteristic.

That would be the 600 PPM of moly. I don't know why they and others put Moly in their bike oils.

[CBRFanatic]

What the hell....my comments for whatever it's worth...

Point 1.

<snip> broke it in on dino oil, and switched it over Mobil synthetic <snip>

It's not a dino oil vs synthetic issue. It's as others have said, the additives like moly that are in some oil formulations

Point 2.

<snip> Regular dinosaurs already contributed a nice long chain carbon molecule to the machinery industry, and its those long molecular chains that give oil its ability to maintain a layer of lubricant. Synthetic oils are copies of those long strings made in a controlled environment with stronger chemical bonds that resist the fracturing of those strings under repetitive heat cycles.....and that's the worth of synthetic oil....longer change intervals. The same additives that help keep contaminants in suspension and buffer the acidity of those contaminants is added to both dino and regular oils.

So you're saying that the covalent bond between two carbon atoms in synthetic oil is somehow stronger than in dino oil? Wrong... for basic chemistry reasons. Synthetic oil (highly refined dino or newly synthesizedsynthesized) just has a more consistant length of carbon chain in it ande less inpurities than regularly refined dino oil.

<snip> There's nothing to indicate that synthetic oil is the holy grail, by any means.

Right, but more carbon chains of a consistant length and less inpurities can result in longer oil change intervals, right?

Point 3.

<snip> There's grooves and channels made to handle the oil flow and allow the clutch to work properly in that environment. So what is it about using synthetic oil that would cause a clutch to slip?

Nothing about synthetic specifically, but as others have said, an additive like moly will "coat" or "fill" those areas and other surfaces resulting in less available friction.

I had an old '79 Kaw KX650 that I used an "energy conserving" oil in by mistake. After a few miles, I noticed the clutch slipping and after some research, thought it mught be because of the oil. I changed back to a non-energy conserving oil and it took a few thousand miles and another oil change before the clutch slippage went away. I should also mention that the oil changes were the only thing that I had done to the bike during this time. No other maintenance or repair was performed.

<snip> But here's the thing....with deep enough hills and valleys on the "microsurface" of that concrete patch, you could put a layer of oil on it and see no difference in the friction component....and that's exactly the design of a wet clutch.

Sure, now take that road and put a layer of paint on it so that all the "hills and valleys" are filled in. That's roughly analygous to the effects of "moly".

But then again, this IS an oil thread...

[EVLXX]

That would be the 600 PPM of moly. I don't know why they and others put Moly in their bike oils.

<snip> But here's the thing....with deep enough hills and valleys on the "microsurface" of that concrete patch, you could put a layer of oil on it and see no difference in the friction component....and that's exactly the design of a wet clutch.

Sure, now take that road and put a layer of paint on it so that all the "hills and valleys" are filled in. That's roughly analygous to the effects of "moly".

But then again, this IS an oil thread...

I find it terribly funning that everyone's first reaction is to blame it on "Moly"....

There's more to an oil additive package than Moly... and then there is the side about How Moly really works...What are the friction clutch plates made out of... what adherse to that material better.... etc.etc. etc.

As I said earlier.... with a "hint hint" ... look at the Calcium and Zinc levels in the oil charts.

Late.r

[tripledigits]

Copied this from another site...

"You can change your oil every 3,000 miles if you're really particular, but we recommend changing it every 5,000 miles," commented Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the erudite grease-monkey hosts of the popular National Public Radio program "Car Talk," on a show last year. "If you change it more often, you are just wasting your money and creating a disposal problem," they noted. They are considering revising their recommendation to 7,500 miles. Synthetic oils, because of their better properties, need to be changed less often, at intervals up to 25,000 miles or more. In the end, the best advice on the type of oil to use and the frequency of oil changes is to follow the manufacturer's recommendation in your car owner's manual.

Chemical & Engineering News

I'm all for extended change intervals for the above reasons, but the oil filter still needs to be changed at the recommended interval. Just a reminder....

[Pete in PA]

400 miles so far and no slipping.

I think my new oil will be 2 quarts of Mobil 1 5-30 and 2 quarts of Mobil 1 15-50.

Wally World SHOULD carry those oils forever.

[Eric_The_Jew]

400 miles so far and no slipping.

I think my new oil will be 2 quarts of Mobil 1 5-30 and 2 quarts of Mobil 1 15-50.

Wally World SHOULD carry those oils forever.

Good to hear things are working out. Just so ya know, my buddy has an RC51. He had the balls to run 0W Mobil1 synthetic in his bike. Two oil changes of the 0W and 6,000 HARD miles later, his clutch is still working perfectly fine!