stinger wrote on 04/30/08 at 00:19:42:By the way, Web Cam states that you should not use any type of synthetic oil in your bike at all. They say use a good petrolium based motor oil. 30 wt.
Well, thankfully they're more knowledgeable about cam profiles than they are about tribology.
You'd want to use a traditional mineral oil like that for bedding in a new cam, but if their advice was to avoid synthetic altogether, they need to go back to school and learn about lubrication because they are totally, utterly wrong, and clearly do not understand oil in engineering terms.
Sadly, there are plenty of people even in the motor industry who suffer ignorance on the subject of lubrication and base their opinions on old wives' tales about oil.
Ignore them, they're wrong. Bed your new cam in with a traditional mineral oil for a couple of hundred miles, or longer if you like, then switch to a full synthetic like Mobil 15W50, and your engine will last twice as long.
I base that advice on fact and experience from working a few years in the oil industry in industrial/automotive lubrication, seeing hundreds of test engines run on synthetics vs mineral, and seeing the results with my own eyes when those engines are stripped for inspection – the difference in wear is just
staggering.
I despair every time I hear about people who should know better giving out dumb, ill-informed advice to the market end-users.