What page in the Suzuki Manuel does it say use oil with ZZZP in it.

Remember too that the ZDDP only comes into play when the oil film has broken down. It protects against metal-to-metal contact, and as long as the oil film is intact there is no metal-to-metal contact.

voldigicam wrote on 10/14/09 at 13:38:11:

Boy you really straighten me out

Charon wrote on 10/14/09 at 13:20:54:


Charon is correct, ZDDP is an extreme pressure additive that puts an impervious surface layer on steel that will resist galling and abrasion when an oil film breaks down.  Momentarily, anyway.

Where does this oil film breakdown happen in a Savage?  Cam lobes and tappets, pin/plate junctions in the cam chain, cam journals in the head, flank surfaces of the highly loaded gear teeth, skirt of the piston rubbing the cylinder wall -- in short all the locations that extreme wear and galling damage shows up in our engines.

Will the ZDDP layer protect an engine in case of a lag in oil pressure at start up (zero oil pressure) or a momentary oil film loss during full speed running?  Yep, a ZDDP film will protect a smooth steel surface for a minute or so until it is worn away.  Generally you get oil pressure in less than 10 seconds after start up so this is a moot point if you have a ZDDP containing oil.  Remember, the ZDDP surface layer gets refurbished by the oil and quickly gets back up to its normal microscopic thickness in time to withstand the next assault.  

Protracted high speed abuse will go thru the oil film and thru the ZDDP layer inside 2 minutes and start causing wear and damage (if you think you need extreme temperature protection, please consider a Syn oil with extreme protection levels).  I go this route as I am a confirmed "wicker".

Why is ZDDP so important that the high performance engine world has howled at its removal or dilution to less than 10 PPM levels?

Because unless a motor was redesigned to use modern oils (with extreme pressure additives removed to keep from killing catalytic converters) it HAS to have ZDDP to live a full life.  Most older designed engines were developed and tested using motor oils with over 10 PPM of ZDDP in them -- engines that had some "heavily loaded" design spots in them that were carried along by the ZDDP film provided by old additive rich oils so the designers never saw any test or wear issues with the design -- until EPA regs took the ZDDP out of the oil and the galling and rapid wear reports started at the hot spots.  Old design engines are dying because of "bad oil".

Our Savage engine have these hot spots in it -- we are an old design engine and we must have our ZDDP or we get galling and relatively rapid wear in these areas when our oil films break down due to heavy loads or high temperatures (or both).

Remember, we have an air cooled engine with ZDDP hot spots in it and an oil pump that is "just enough" to do the job with the old type oils.

Should our members be using modern "ordinary car oils" that have been neutered by the EPA in their Savages?

No -- they should use either a motorcycle specific oil or one of the known good diesel truck oils that all have the necessary ZDDP additive packages combined with an oil weight and a high temperature rating sufficient for your area.

Now, Florida temperatures do not require a 20w50 oil, a 10w40 carries a temp rating sufficient for Florida or Texas.  However a 20w50 oil is good for that summer range, it just isn't user friendly for a colder climate in winter.  Florida doesn't have cold winters, so that 20w50 is fine for Florida year round.

I will submit that a 15w40 diesel oil like Rotella T meets use specs for our bikes anywhere in the USA at the lowest cost to the user.  Meets it, giving up nothing to the much more expensive motorcycle oils costing over $10 a quart.  

Rotella T triple protection in the white jug at $11 a gallon at Walmart, someplace we all can find it easily and cheaply.

Or if you want an extreme temperature synthetic oil, Rotella Syn in the blue jug for $19.00 a gallon.  This oil is currently being "warred" as the best oil for our bikes based on list member usage and actual use reports.  So far the ones using it seem to like it for concrete reasons that they are discovering and reporting.

Break in is over by 600 miles according to most sources.  You could switch over to synthetic any time after 1000 and feel totally safe in doing so.

No point in doing a mix of oils.  I'd feel more comfortable running a "consistent" single oil so as to have the same packages working together as the manufacturer intended them to work.

Example:  you are using brand A and brand B to make your mix.  They use different packages to achieve the same desired effect, but in each case the package must be at a certain PPM to be effective.  Since you are running a 50-50 mix neither of the different packages is anywhere near an effective PPM, so in essence you get no protection at all because you mixed them and thinned both out way too far.

Better to pick a product with known good packages and stick with it.

MMRanch wrote on 10/14/09 at 19:39:08:

Sounds like if you use Rotella oil you need to tear down the engine every 15000 miles,that doesn't sound to hot to me,Theres been people on here with 50000 mile and engine never been apart.Of course they didn't know about Rotella in the green bottle. With ZZZP in it.

Bill, where you been boy?  I keep forgetting you are a relative newbie to the list and really don't know the list problem history very well.

Verslagen & company still recommend you take your side cover off and look at your cam chain and tensioner every 15,000 miles.   Considering the damage that you can get if you don't catch it before it fails this is simply good sense.

Remember, the Verslavy cam chain tensioner trick didn't even exist 2-3 years ago -- people replaced their cam chains back then because they had no other option.  Ask Justin or the other old timers who have had multiple cam chains in their bikes.  Heck, Justin is lucky he had saved his old cam chain as he now plans to put it back in eventually as it is only "half used up" when you are using all the Verslavy mod tricks.

Also, most of our bikes were bought used -- and we don't know what the previous owners used for oils or what those oils had in them.  In some cases those bikes had wear and damage because of previous neglect.

===============

Speaking of wear and damage, some of us use our bikes harder than most.  Having ridden the Dragon with MMRanch, he falls in that category as he uses his bike to the max all the time.  Verslagen is another hard user.  For folks like this, that is good cam chain durability.  

Verslagen tracks cam chain life on a listing he maintains.  He has a few documented failures under 10,000 miles and a few over 30,000 miles.  By educating people about oil we hope to decrease the number of infantile failures his list is seeing.

Now, something that HAS improved since we started fighting each oil war out (and educating each new crop of newbies) -- we have had very few "slipper clutches" in the last year or so.   Folks sticking car oils in their Savages were fouling their plates with the energy starburst additives and killing their clutches right frequently back then, but since oil war education has started that has dropped off quite a bit.

bill67 wrote on 10/15/09 at 06:31:57:


Where do you get the idea that using Rotella, as you are inferring, causes people to have to tear their engines apart?