5w40 synthetic oil?  By  makarov (Read 6,309 times)

O

Yes--New oil he got on clearance at walmart.

It's good oil for the break in, but not really for a scooter.
The 5 is telling you not only that it's made for very low temps, but paired with W40, it tells you that there's actually very little oil, and a lot of thickening agent in.

The best oils are the ones where numbers are close together, like 15W40, or 15W30, 20W40.
The further apart, the more thickening agent (or additives) are in there, and the less actual oil (eg: 5W30, 5W40, 5W50).

That is a fact gatekeeper as a matter of fact they say NOT to use 15w40 after break in to use 10w40.
Alleyoop

You were not around then prodigit but on the old SD there was a big write up on the oils to use and this was done in labs. And we all thought just like you 15w40 was the thing to use but the results said 15w40 had more additives which you need for break in but after break in they recommended 10w40 to be the best to use.

If you have a leaky motor and you are not ready to tear it apart and re-gasket it to use 20w50 and that should stop it from leaking as a temporary fix.
Alleyoop

This is what I hate about oil questions. It is like arguing about religion.

I'd use the 5-40 myself. And sleep well at night. It is really just too bad these scooter don't have oil pressure gauges so you can monitor the pressure generated by the pump.

Yeah,

What I wrote above, is just general information.
The type of oil you choose has a lot to do with the age/wear of your engine, temperature of the engine, and size of it. What kind of gas mileage you want to get out of it, and how much performance and gas mileage you are willing to trade for engine life.

That being said, 10W30 to 10W40 is pretty much the standard oil for a scooter.
If you value engine life, and are living in not too cold regions, 15W40 is probably better.
However, chances are that 15W40 oil of one brand, may actually be worse for your engine than 10W30 of another brand.
Most people don't lie awake about whether they should have gone with 10W30 instead of 5W30; however, it may be interesting to know that thicker oil (the first number, the '15' out of '15W40', or the '10' out of '10W30'), generally speaking, increases engine life; so perhaps on the next time shopping, someone might try out another oil to see how it works for them performance wise.

Another interesting fact is, that 10W30 oil, actually has more oil in it than 10W40, and would last longer (as 10W40 has more thickening agent in it). So it's a lot more complex than I first thought...
Depending on how hot your engine runs, if it runs cool, like a water cooled engine, get 10W30. If it runs hot, like an air cooled 150cc or performance/BBK 50cc scoot, 15W40 might be better than 10W40.

Another interesting thought might be:
Compared to using 10W40, mixing 2 different types might be a lot better for your scoot.
Suppose 10W30 oil is too light for your air cooled scooter, and it vibrates a lot, but you don't like the performance/MPG's you get out of 15W40 oil; you could mix em.
If you do a 50/50 mix, you should get 12.5W35 oil, and the result is much better than 10W40; as the resulting base oil will be only a little heavier (12.5), and on a hot engine, the MPG's will not suffer the full 10 numbers difference of a 10W40, but only 5.
Generally though 10W30 vs 10W40 mpg numbers should make out less than 10% of difference.

Still, mixing them you've successfully made longer lasting oil, while increasing MPG's on a hot engine... Not bad!



On my TaoTao ATM50, I do notice that it starts a lot harder with 15W40 than with 10W40, and it somewhat takes longer for the engine to warm up, and come to it's full potential, but once it does, it works just as good as the 10W40 oil I used before; only now I know that my engine will more than likely, last longer with this type of oil; as well as it runs way smoother, less vibration is a good thing too.