Amsoil Motor oil | GTAMotorcycle.com

Amsoil Motor oil

RockerGuy

RockerGuy

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I did an Oil Analysis at Blackstone Labs. Great people to deal with. They actually called me to discuss the results, I was really impressed because they actually take their time to discuss the results and give professional opinions.

The oil I used were Amsoil 10w-40. They were not motorcycle specific, but they were JASO-MA certified for wet clutch. I use synthetic oil and only change them around 10,000kms. To get a good gauge on how well things are going, I decided to get professional results and here they are:

GSXR750.jpg


They even went on to say that I can safely run my oil until 11,000km. There are still lots of additives remaining in the oil. So for those who are doubtful about running synthetics for that long, here is your answer.

edit: The only problem seems to be the viscosity of the oil. They say there is shearing of the oil, but that is natural for a high rpm engine.
 
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Thanks For posting this, Heritage Auto & Powersports is a supplier and uses Amsoil for all motorcycle oil changes.
 
i have allways used castrol gtx in all my street bikes and my race bikes from1990 to 2011 even my zx856(with a 153hp) and have 4 years of races on the clutch .
i did buy a used race bike 95 zx6r that had only been using amsoil. the tranny and main/rod bearing had major wear.
 
Amsoil is a great oil, but they are expensive and on par with other Top brand oil. They all have weaknesses. You have to look to see which weakness you can live with.

For the above results, the oil was shearing at high RPM. But other than that, it does protect the engine components
 
EngineerJoe said:
I would think that the shearing at high RPM would take away from the life of the oil.
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you are right, breaking down viscosity is not a desired trait. They say in a perfect world the thin film of oil on the metal should prevent metal/metal contact and prevent any sort of wear. I think when the viscosity breaks down is where the film of oil on the metal is too thin and wear happens.

I am not sure if collecting my sample had anything to do with it. But I was supposed to run the vehicle at highway speeds to warm the engine to get any moisture or fuel out of the oil. I just warmed my bike by idling it. Something I missed!
 
I had an old CBR600F4 with 85000km on it. It was using Amsoil from 5000km on and was used for street trips, commuting and lots of track time throughout its whole life. I dyno'd it at around 83000km and it was at 95hp, and never burned a drop of oil. I replaced the clutch around that time also and everything in that area of the engine was very clean and free of wear.

I've run Amsoil in all my bikes and cars for over 10 years, no internal engine issues to report.

In regards to the shear test, I wonder if there is anything extra with the motorcycle specific Amsoil designed to deal with higher RPMs... Yep, here it is, grabbed from this page on the Amsoil site


PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
AMSOIL Synthetic 10W-40 Motorcycle Oil (MCF) is a premium oil designed for those who demand the absolute best lubrication for their motorcycles. AMSOIL MCF is the result of extensive research, and it is specially formulated to excel in all areas unique to motorcycles, including high engine RPM, wet clutch lubrication, extreme pressure regions of gears and rust common to short drives and storage.
 
Interesting ... I wonder what makes this stuff so special. I'm not looking at the wear metals but rather the elements that are part of antiwear additives.

Zinc and phosphorous (part of ZDDP extreme-pressure antiwear additive - for flat tappet cams - which >90% of motorcycles have) are nothing special, 1000 - 1200 ppm is a normal range. Boron is part of another antiwear additive - one that's supposed to substitite for ZDDP - appears low. There's next to no moly, either - that's another antiwear additive component.

I looked up a Blackstone oil analysis for Shell Rotella T6 elsewhere on the internet. ZDDP looks about the same, there is a little more boron and significantly higher moly. I think I'll stick with that ...
 
Do you have a dry clutch? Molybdenum is very bad for wet clutches...
 
doozerdave said:
Do you have a dry clutch? Molybdenum is very bad for wet clutches...
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I have a wet clutch. But my Moly values are not that high, it is 2ppm compared to 50ppm which is the average for my vehicle.

I have the "key" for the results above but will have to scan and post when I have time.

As for tests performed by Amsoil, I would not take their results quite literal. Some of it are skewed to their liking. There are other tests online that tell a different story. Each oil has their drawbacks, there are no perfect oil that can do all.

But at the end of the day, its not that bad of an oil
 
doozerdave said:
Do you have a dry clutch? Molybdenum is very bad for wet clutches...
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Some other oils that meet JASO MA have moly in them, so the certification bodies don't seem too concerned about it ... and neither have any of my bikes.
 
I was doing a 2nd test for my car and decided to throw in a test for Rotella Synthetic. For those who are curious for data on Rotella.

GSXR-2ndtest.jpg
 
I'm no expert and oil threads are incredibly long. I used to use Amsoil; switched largely due to cost. But talking to a mechanic at Edge Performance a couple years ago, he wasn't a fan because he found that a lot of the transmissions he wound up replacing, doing extensive service on; were in many cases using Amsoil. He thought that the oil had way too many additivies in it and that it was taking its toll on trannies with wet clutches (sounds filthy I know) especially. I'll note that correlation doesn't equal causation, though; and just wondering if anyone else has more insight on if this is an issue or not?
 
canuckerjay said:
I'm no expert and oil threads are incredibly long. I used to use Amsoil; switched largely due to cost. But talking to a mechanic at Edge Performance a couple years ago, he wasn't a fan because he found that a lot of the transmissions he wound up replacing, doing extensive service on; were in many cases using Amsoil. He thought that the oil had way too many additivies in it and that it was taking its toll on trannies with wet clutches (sounds filthy I know) especially. I'll note that correlation doesn't equal causation, though; and just wondering if anyone else has more insight on if this is an issue or not?
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I'm not sure if you're talking bike or car, but if its the bike and there were wear in the wet clutch there would be metal present in the oil, since they share the same oil.

I don't see how additives could play a role in causing tranny failure.
 
My F4 with 85000km never had any tranny issues at all. That's one sampling ;)

I also use Amsoil manual trans-axle fluid (essentially gear oil) in my car (almost 100000km so far) and it's fantastic. Night-and-day difference in smoothness of mesh. I used it in my old car for 150000km with no issues either.
 
Soooo Rotella works just as well as Amsoil, interesting
 
regder said:
Soooo Rotella works just as well as Amsoil, interesting
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They use different additives. Amsoil has more Zinc and Calcium, all of which is used as a detergent.
Rotella used more Molybdenum
 
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