Wrong Oil

[670cc]

I would agree, Greg.

However, I would stay away from synthetic and stick to straight mineral oil.
It is unnecessary IMHO, and may not be the best diet for the clutch (clutches in the DCT).
I would really like to hear what the engineers in Japan have to say about that.

I think the engineers have spoken by not speaking. Honda makes no mention of using synthetic oil in any of my Honda two-wheelers. The don’t say you can’t, and they don’t say you can. If Honda made it an option to use synthetic oil, and as a result the oil change intervals were specifically extended by using synthetic, it might in some cases be worth it going that route. The extended change interval could offset the higher price of synthetic oil. But, such is not the case, so no synthetic for me. It has no advantages to justify it’s typically higher price.

Uh-oh. I am perpetuating an oil thread. THE dreaded oil thread. My appologies.

 

[mzflorida]

I think the engineers have spoken by not speaking. Honda makes no mention of using synthetic oil in any of my Honda two-wheelers. The don’t say you can’t, and they don’t say you can. If Honda made it an option to use synthetic oil, and as a result the oil change intervals were specifically extended by using synthetic, it might in some cases be worth it going that route. The extended change interval could offset the higher price of synthetic oil. But, such is not the case, so no synthetic for me. It has no advantages to justify it’s typically higher price.

Uh-oh. I am perpetuating an oil thread. THE dreaded oil thread. My appologies.

I agree with you completely on the lack of recommendations in the manual. And I also dislike a belabored oil thread...accept my apology too! But I made the switch to synthetic. This is from Honda regarding their HP4S fully synthetic oil. They are reporting some benefits of their synthetic as compared to mineral based lubricants.

"New Pro Honda HP4S is Honda’s first fully synthetic four-stroke motorcycle oil and was quite literally years in the making. HP4S offers lower friction than conventional oils, better oxidation resistance for better high-heat performance, higher film strength and quicker flow to vital engine parts at low temperatures, especially during startup. And best of all, HP4S provides maximum power due to less frictional drag. HP4S is approved for use in all 2006 or newer motorcycles, ATVs, Scooters and PWC. It is, quite simply, our very finest four-stroke oil.HP4S is compatible with synthetic blends such as HP4, as well as regular petroleum oils like GN4. There is no need to flush the crankcases before switching to HP4S."

I've read a lot about oil but really can't support that any of the claims are true.

 

[bigbird]

HP4S was introduced in 2009.
I'd be hesitant to use it in any Honda DCT motorcycle unless it was specifically recommended, as GN4 is.

 

[dduelin]

This is what I know about the shift to 10w30 as the primary oil viscosity for late model Honda motorcycles. At the turn of the century Honda still had a good mix of air cooled engines in their product line. Air cooled engines work within a wide range range of normal operating temperature affected both from movement of air over exterior cooling fins and from ambient air temperatures. Inside an air cooled engine, oil temperatures are greatly affected by the two factors and Honda recommended oils from 10w30 to 20w50 in many manuals to cope with this varying climates. 10w40 however was the primary viscosity recommendation and older folks like me remember when 10W40 was stamped or molded into the engine case next to the dipstick opening. After 2000 more and more Honda engines were designed to be liquid cooled. The great advantage of liquid cooling is the ability to reduce the wide operating temperature range of an air cooled engine to a very narrow range of operating temperature. With a very narrow operating temperature on the intake side fuel/air mixtures can be tightly controlled and on the exhaust side exhaust gas temperatures are tightly controlled so catalytic convertors can be utilized to control exhaust gas emissions. Liquid cooled engines provide all weather all climate reliable power and emission outputs and worldwide emissions regulations were coming to motorcycles with Euro 4 & 5 regulations. Honda saw the design shift to liquid cooling as the only way forward for on-road motorcycles.

Idemitsu is one of Japan's oldest oil refiners and producers. Honda Motor Company Ltd. has no vendor relationship older than the one with Idemitsu, going back to the pre war 1930s when Sochiro Honda was learning how to build piston rings for Toyota. To this day this relationship is unbroken for over 80 years. In the early 2000s Honda jointly commissioned an extensive study of engine oils and the Idemitsu White Paper concluded that 10w30 was the best viscosity recommendation for Honda on-road motorcycle engines in the liquid cooled era. With the narrow operating temperatures of liquid cooled bikes and Honda moving to exclusively liquid cooled engines in street bikes the change to 10w30 as primary came with 2006 models. Prior to 2006 most if not all Honda motorcycle owner and service manuals still had those ambient air temp range charts but big changes by 2007. The initial change in 2006 was just to two choices, 10w30 and 10w40. Of course we all knew that engines in production in 2005 and 2006 had no internal changes or modifications and the older manuals would necessarily show multiple viscosity ranges so there was (is) period of time when some Honda owners still favor 10w40 or 15w40 products. I guess for 10 years street bike owner manuals still showed 10w30, 10w40, 15w40, 15w50, and 20w50 choices. It appears that now even 10w40 is dropped. Off road bikes did not necessarily follow this path but I'm not addressing them.

The White Paper concluded that improvements in multi-viscosity oil products, engine design, and reduced production tolerances between parts resulted in Honda approved products in 10w30 provided the best combination of internal friction coefficients, lowest oil and cylinder head operating temperatures, and acceptable shear-down of viscosity over designed oil change intervals in Honda liquid cooled street bikes. In my capacity as a parts manager in a Honda dealership I did see and read the white paper summary and often "talked oil" with the Honda technical rep in my district. As a business, American Honda recommended dealers to stock and sell Honda Pro Chemical products of course but we had other vendors and carried other oils, whose reps had interest in explaining the benefits of their products. It's noteworthy to me that the Idemitsu paper doesn't rule out other viscosities, it just helped explain why Honda product and marketing literature was changing after 2006. I still run 10w40 GN4 in my two older Hondas, a 1986 air cooled Elite 80 and a 2006 Goldwing.

A certain segment of the market prefers synthetics and Honda sells their 10w30 HP4S product to meet that demand. FWIW I ran synthetic 10w30 HP4S nearly exclusively for about 70,000 miles in my NC700s, about half of that in my 2015 DCT. I rode a ST1300 to 180,000 miles using primarily Rotella 15w40 and talked to the guy that bought it from me yesterday. It's over 200,000 miles now and still burns no oil between oil changes. The best oil is one that meets the range Honda [no longer] recommends that is changed ON TIME WITHOUT FAIL.

 

[bigbird]

Does Idemitsu have a manufacturing and packaging facility in the US?
The jug of 10W-40 GN4 that I have left over from my Goldwing days says made in the USA from domestic and imported ingredients.
I Googled Idemitsu manufacturing facilities and only found a corporate office in Michigan.
Maybe Honda has gone to having the lowest bidder supply their lubricants in N. America, or perhaps Idemitsu has gone to outsourcing as well?
It's a lot cheaper to have lubricants manufactured and packaged in the market of consumption rather than shipped from Japan.

 

[DirtFlier]

As regards Hondaline motorcycle oils, they were being produced by Ashland in KY for several decades. It's like most other things - you give them the formula for what you want and they produce and package it for you.

dduelin - was "Sam" your Honda tech rep?

 

[dduelin]

Does Idemitsu have a manufacturing and packaging facility in the US?
The jug of 10W-40 GN4 that I have left over from my Goldwing days says made in the USA from domestic and imported ingredients.
I Googled Idemitsu manufacturing facilities and only found a corporate office in Michigan.
Maybe Honda has gone to having the lowest bidder supply their lubricants in N. America, or perhaps Idemitsu has gone to outsourcing as well?
It's a lot cheaper to have lubricants manufactured and packaged in the market of consumption rather than shipped from Japan.

Don't go there.

Honda chooses vendors based on whether they can consistently produce a product that meets Honda's tightly controlled specifications to an agreed-upon cost. For oil it might be Idemitsu in Japan, or Conoco Phillips in the USA. Who puts it in the jug doesn't matter, only what's in the jug matters. I see keyboard jockeys implying low cost bidding means inferior products when it means nothing of the sort. If a manufacturing business sets high quality standards and then pays more than necessary to meet the standard - by definition that is not quality and the business is not maximizing allocation of scarce resources. If they have to pay more to get a product that consistently meets the standard then by definition the suppler of the higher cost product becomes the low cost bidder.

 

[670cc]

That is a very interesting, informative post, Dave. It does explain how Honda’s oil recommendations have arrived at where they are today.

It’s funny, the owners manual for our 2003 Honda scooter, liquid cooled but without integrated transmission or wet clutch, has the air temperatur/oil viscosity chart that gives a choice of four different viscosities. If you run between 35*F and 85*F, anything from10W-30 to 20W-50 is acceptable. In fact back then, 10W-30 wasn’t even recommended for 90*F riding weather.

I’m guessing a study was done by Honda in the last decade that concluded that oil filter changes need not be done every oil change, resulting in the change to the NC maintenance schedule. My 2017 CRF also has the 16,000 mile oil filter interval.

Thanks again for the informative post.

 

[dduelin]

As regards Hondaline motorcycle oils, they were being produced by Ashland in KY for several decades. It's like most other things - you give them the formula for what you want and they produce and package it for you.

dduelin - was "Sam" your Honda tech rep?

You know, I cannot remember his name, he only called on the phone. Denny was the regional technical rep I do remember and he came into the dealership at least once a quarter if not more. Denny is usually at Daytona in March for the whole weel and I met and knew him for years there before going to work at that dealer.

 

[bigbird]

I see keyboard jockeys implying low cost bidding means inferior products when it means nothing of the sort.

We've seen exactly that in the automotive industry for decades if not more than a century.
It is still happening today, with Ford publicly admitting to the Auto News they have this exact problem with their Explorer.

To make an implication that this would never happen with Honda is extremely optimistic.
I hope you're correct, but anything can happen in the boardrooms and accounting offices of private companies.

 

[itsmenc700]

10w30 and 10w40 will behave the same from 30°F up to summer temps - lets say 80°F.
Using 10w40 will in no way impact how the engine gets or is lubricated.
10w40 is not thicker, it just doesn't thin out as much as 10w30 weight would when the temps are very high, therefore keeping your engine lubricated just fine when riding in those higher temps.

 

[davidc83]

more to the oil thread...guess Honda doesnt think riders ride when it is above 30'C or 86'F as that is the operating temperature for 10w30 per previous chart....I have ridden when it is above 100'F; I use 15w40 non-synthetic (use this in all my internal combustion engines, except my Prius-it uses 0w20), good to 104'F (temps in the summer down close to the asphalt is higher than the ambient temp...

 

[670cc]

more to the oil thread...guess Honda doesnt think riders ride when it is above 30'C or 86'F as that is the operating temperature for 10w30 per previous chart....I have ridden when it is above 100'F; I use 15w40 non-synthetic (use this in all my internal combustion engines, except my Prius-it uses 0w20), good to 104'F (temps in the summer down close to the asphalt is higher than the ambient temp...

I’m not sure what chart you are referring to, as the ambient temperatur/oil viscosity chart that Honda published in the 2012 NC700X service manual (see post #34) shows 10W-30 as acceptable for all temperatures above -10*C.

 

[dduelin]

We've seen exactly that in the automotive industry for decades if not more than a century.
It is still happening today, with Ford publicly admitting to the Auto News they have this exact problem with their Explorer.

To make an implication that this would never happen with Honda is extremely optimistic.
I hope you're correct, but anything can happen in the boardrooms and accounting offices of private companies.

"Whataboutism" is everywhere isn't it?

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[MZ5]

Does Idemitsu have a manufacturing and packaging facility in the US?

Yes, Idemitsu has blending facilities in the USA (I don’t recall offhand about Canada). American Honda has used primarily Mobil and Conoco-Phillips to produce their Honda-branded fluids for decades. It makes business sense to choose the lowest bidder who meets technical specs and other requirements, don’t you think?

***EDIT:
I think we should not overlook Honda’s long-standing corporate position (philosophy?), and possibly some regulatory considerations. Using less fuel is important to Honda, regardless the reason. One of the easiest ways to do that is to reduce wasted energy pumping fluids around. So long as the intended durability is maintained, using less fuel in a given bike is good for everyone.

 

[dduelin]

Yes, Idemitsu has blending facilities in the USA (I don’t recall offhand about Canada). American Honda has used primarily Mobil and Conoco-Phillips to produce their Honda-branded fluids for decades. It makes business sense to choose the lowest bidder who meets technical specs and other requirements, don’t you think?

A few times I had to run over to the wholesale distributor to get oil in a hurry when I let inventory get too low and couldn't wait for the order to process through and be delivered to us. The warehouse was only 10 miles away. It's convoluted.... I ordered Honda oil from Conoco Phillips and received the stock from the local Shell wholesaler who drop shipped various brands with stock of those brands in the same building. Once the warehouse guy said to follow me back to grab the two cases I needed and on a rack saw pallets of Idemitsu branded oil in Idemitsu labeled container complete with English and Japanese on the bottles. Where it went in the USA or South America I couldn't tell you.

 

[davidc83]

I’m not sure what chart you are referring to, as the ambient temperatur/oil viscosity chart that Honda published in the 2012 NC700X service manual (see post #34) shows 10W-30 as acceptable for all temperatures above -10*C.

post #27...if that chart is correct...I copied this chart from an oil manufacturer's website (not going to say which)..

History of oil viscosity from the same:
For starters, in oil nomenclature, “W” does not stand for “Weight”. It stands for “Winter” and that is the key to understanding viscosity grades. A 10W-30 is a multi-grade (two viscosities) motor oil, and as the name implies, it meets more than one grade. Forty years ago, there were winter grades for cold weather and summer grades for warmer weather. A typical winter grade was 10W. A typical summer grade was 30. These oils were straight grade oils. A 10W flows well in cold weather, to protect the engine at start up, but it’s is too thin for use in the summer. A 30 grade oil, thick enough to protect in the heat, was recommended for summer use.

Then, multi-grade oils were formulated. A 10W-30 had the winter cold start flow properties of a 10W and the summer, high-temperature thickness of a 30 grade. Multi-grade oils could stay as close to the optimum viscosity over a range of temperatures – not too thick when it is cold and not too thin when it is hot.

The difference between a 0W-30 and a 10W-30 is indicated by how well each flows at lower temperatures. The viscosity of hot oil is measured using different test parameters than when the oil is cold, so the numbers after the “W” don’t relate to the numbers in front of the “W”. The difference between 10W-30 and a 10W-40 is the high temperature viscosity. Obviously, a 10W-40 is thicker than a 10W-30 at high temperature.

Edit: the above info is from a distributor not a manufacturer...
With all the temp ranges from different weight of oil...there seems to be no 'right' or 'wrong' answer...My Prius recommends 0w20 oil synthetic, but there are Prius owners out there running 10w30 or 10w40 Dino oil with 100,000+ miles on their engines...No harm, no foul...... we have members who uses Premium gas even though Honda recommends 87 Octane,,,again, no harm no foul....Riders are just going to have to agree to disagree...

 

[bigbird]

I don't see a 0W-20 on the graph.
That weight is probably the most common in the 4 wheeled world right now.
Extrapolating down form the 0W-30 listed, a 0W-20 would only protect up to 30C (86F).
That would be inadequate for most of N. America in the summer.
So, why is 0W-20 missing?
And is 0W-20, which only is available as a full synthetic, OK for hot summer temps?

At the end of the day, I use what's suggested in my owner's manuals for all my internal combustion engine lubrication, and I don't lose sleep over any of it.

 

[670cc]

While I‘m personally partly responsible for causing this thread to continue, I sense that this oil thread has now run it’s course, having branched out beyond the topic of Honda’s NC series motorcycle oil recommendations, and even branching beyond the motorcycle world. I make a motion that this thread be closed. Is there a second to the motion?

 

[bigbird]

While I‘m personally partly responsible for causing this thread to continue, I sense that this oil thread has now run it’s course, having branched out beyond the topic of Honda’s oil recommendations, and branching beyond the motorcycle world. I make a motion that this thread be closed. Is there a second to the motion?

I second it because I am totally responsible for it deviating from the motorcycle world.