I've been changing my oil around every 1000-1200 miles or so. Never bothered me changing the oil, it only takes about 30 minutes or less to do. At under $20, and a bit more with a filter, it's the cheapest insurance I can buy, especially with a 22 year old bike. It cost twice that much to fill my car with gas every week, on the company's dime of course

I used a sieve for the old oil when I changed it last week. Not a piece of metal to be found anywhere. I check for fuel smell also.

You might want to research with the Search engine looking for ZDP, or ZDDP and additive packages and tappets to discover why you need to be very particular about the oil that you do use in your Savage.

The Savage cam system operates with flat tappets which used to be common in most engines.  Oils used to carry additive packages for this need, all oils sold had the ZDP, ZDDP or zinc phosphorus anti-galling compounds in them in appreciable quantities, even the cheapest oils had it.   Flat tappet engines had to have it, so oil makers put it in all oils.

ZDP/ZDDP was great stuff to stop the galling, but it unfortunately it was discovered that ZDP/ZDDP killed 2nd generation catalytic converters and so it was phased out of all car only auto oils in the last 5 years.   Roller tappets are now required in engines now because roller tappets can survive without ZDDP and all new engines have roller tappets or shim and bucket tappets in them for this reason.

The Savage engine does not.  It has 1950-1960 style flat tappets, plain chunks of metal that are held to a fairly soft condition on purpose by the manufacturer so they take any wear and leave the cam lobes sitting up high & proud.  

Flat tappets require ZDP or ZDDP in the oil for a decent engine service life (as does our cam chain, BTW).   12-13 PPM is the least amount of ZDP/ZDDP an oil should have in it for Savage use.

Here is an extreme example of what the lack of a proper ZDDP additive package in normal car engine oils can look like if you run your engine with a modern normal 10W40 car motor oil for years and years and years.  Ugly, ain't it?   We see lots of shades of this nonsense when we tear down the top end of our Savages (and so will you if you don't get smart about the oil you use)



To not have this happen to you, you can either pay $10 a quart for a really good premium motorcycle oil (which action makes you sorta wealthy and kinda dumb) or you can use a good diesel oil such as Rotella T 15w40 or Rotella 5w40 Synthetic which DOES HAVE the ZDDP package in them that you need for your Savage.  

You can buy this stuff by the gallon ($11 to $19 per gallon) at Walmart.   This is a "inexpensive good oil" for your Savage.

Or you can buy all the expensive crap mentioned earlier in this thread (IF you will bother to read the label to find out if it has the right amount of ZDDP in it what you need -- some of the stuff mentioned earlier does not have it).

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And guys, truly what you really need to do is learn how to do is use the search function here on the list and read up on a subject a bit before offering a bunch of opinions that might get acted upon by someone with a brand new motorcycle.

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Also, be aware that what follows is called "an oil war".   Be nice and try to make your points intelligently and support them with something other more substantial than "they said" -- oil wars do have honorable rules of conduct.

And don't forget to tell each other about the energy star on the oil bottle and what it means for clutch slippage in the Savage clutch ....




Oldfeller

Thanks Oldfeller:
I copied your Rotella info to my bike notes and will be looking for it at Walmart. A fella desn't mind paying $8-$10 for a quart for piece of mind, but if you can get the same piece of mind cheaper, why not.

The phosphorus in the zinc dialkyldithiopohsphate poisons catalytic converters.  The amount in car engine oils is now limited to 0.08%, and will stay at 0.08% under the upcoming new spec (ILSAC GF-5) due out in a year or two.  It previously was 0.1%.  Other additives in oil do the same job, but they cost more and don't do the double duty as an antioxidant that ZDDP does.

Engine oil is about 75 to 80% base oil and about 20 to 25% additive package.  This is the mixture of detergents, dispersants, anti foamants, antioxidants, anti wear agents, friction modifiers, corrosion inhibitors, viscosity index improvers, pour point depressants, dye, etc.

The phosphorus limit in diesel engine oils is .12%.  Any of the diesel engine oils will do a fine job, as will any motorcycle oil.  Shell's Rotella-T line is one of many very good diesel engine oils.

One of the main problems with 10W-40 oil is the viscosity spread they're trying to achieve.  To get a cold-to-hot spread that great with conventional oil they need to add a lot of a polymer called viscosity index improvers.  These are plastic bits that change shape when heated.  They make the oil thicken so it passes the hot viscosity test, but then slim down when cold so it also passes the cold viscosity test.  These do not lubricate; they just take up space in the oil.  The cheaper ones break down (shear) so they do no good at all.  I'd never use conventional 10W-40 oil in any engine.*

Specifications for diesel CJ-4 engine oil
Specifications for gasoline SM engine oil

Note test sequence IV-A for cam wear and sequence VIII for bearing wear limits.  These are bench tests of actual engines running specified sequences to test for wear.  The previous two specs, SJ & SL, allowed more cam wear, but was a slightly different test on an engine not presently in production.

*Why does Suzuki recommend 10W-40?   (1) we don't know the chemical specs in the oil blended for their label, (2) they are in the business of selling spare parts and new motorcycles...

Here is a very informative article from Penrite, an Australian oil company, about zinc in oil:
http://www.penriteoil.com/uk/nextpage.php?navlink=Zinc%20in%20Engine%20Oils

There have been a number of articles and we have heard comments from various “expert” commentators regarding the more recent API specifications and their impact on older petrol engined vehicles.  Unfortunately there is a lot of mis-information out there and also contradictory information as to what can and cannot be used in older vehicles.

The focus has been on zinc, or more correctly, ZDTP (zinc di-thiophosphate).  For many years this has been the anti wear additive of choice as it is the most cost effective (and one of the most effective) chemistry to use.  Also incorrectly described as an extreme pressure additive, its primary role is to prevent wear in the rings and in the valve train (cams, tappets, valve stems etc) of the engine.

When you add ZDTP you also add phosphorus.  This is a catalyst poison and there have been limits on it since the days of API SH (1994) when a 0.12% limit was imposed.  Prior to that, in the days of API SG (1989) many manufacturers already had put a 0.10% limit on phosphorus.  So, “low” phosphorus has been with us for quite some time.

In effect, an engine oil that contains about 0.1% phosphorus or higher, will easily provide the required anti wear properties for older engines and in fact ones at around 0.07% will do the job very nicely. ---more in the link---

PTRider wrote on 06/30/09 at 16:49:50:


This makes sense as Savage top end problems have been documented long time ago, far before current engine oils. If anyone wants I can e-mail a scan of Motorrad magazine long term test published in 1991 together with official Suzuki explanation.

ls650v wrote on 07/01/09 at 03:28:09:
You must be talking about this post http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1246336685 LOL. Maybe he should start a contest. Can you guess what did this damage? My guess is someone decided to save money and make their own air filter. It failed and sucked in a quart of earth evetually grinding it to a halt.
    If it is damaged from oil starvation he really is right on both counts. If it wasnt getting any oil it certainly wasnt getting any ZDP LMAO    Gazoo