Not sure on the line of questioning here so I'll just give it a roll here and see if I cover it. The oil is Kendall 20/50W GT-1 High Performance. The big twin I was referring to are in fact Harley's - specifically pre evolution. I know nothing of the ones built after the Shovelhead.Why we don't use "Harley recommended" oils in the Savage. First, the weight is wrong. Yes, I know you can do it, but a 20w50 weight oil is too thick for the Savage, winter or summer.
Stick with the 40 weight oil the Savage was designed for and you will get what you should have for piston drag and performance losses due to oil factors. In house testing with 20w50 weight oils showed the head and the sump run hotter with 20w50 simply because it causes friction loss due to the higher viscosity and the thicker oil is slower to release heat to the environment when pooled down in the sump. In Verslagen's testing, 20w50 oils ran the head and the sump about 10 degrees hotter than the 40 weight oil did, just due to the increased viscosity.
Also, please realize that
large Harley engines use a separate oil slump for their engines and any specialty formulated Harley type oils can contain moly and/or titanium additives at levels that would be a "friction modifier" contaminate in a wet clutch bike like a Savage.
Plus, all Harleys use roller tappets in their valve train, which do not even have the sort of long dragging friction surface that we Savagers have to deal with. A Harley oil simply misses the mark in a Savage engine.
What is "potentially wrong" with the Kendal oils bottled latelyKendal is just a brand name now-a-days and
the oil in the jug itself seems to change formulation without any real notice. VOA evidence of oils running the gamut from simple car oils to real performance oils is found in BITOG, with the name on the oil jug remaining the same over the years. Older seems to be better, but here is an example of a "lighter" VOA.
http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/3314209/Kendall_GT... Seriously, this one seems to have been a standard car oil by its VOA. Tons of calcium, not much zinc and phosphorus (car levels).
Does Kendal do a better job with its real racing oils? Perhaps. But since the RACING OIL bottling changes frequently and it isn't widely available it becomes a very moot point.
Also remember that real racing oils do not have detergent additive packages in them, because real racing oil is changed after every single race and detergent packages rob hp from a pure performance racing engine and are left out of all real racing oils on purpose.
Supply of the Kendal oil at local outlets is somewhat irregular of late as the retail sales minded people bottling it
only bring out the Kendal brand name when they have a particular reason to do so.
For example, bulk amounts of Kendal oil bought on $3-$4 close-out pricing seems to be the reason the oil gets tested at BITOG of late.
So, Conoco/Philips does bring out new oils each season, generally formulated to current car standards and some of them get bottled as Kendal, with varying results.
The fact Kendal has at least two grades of Kendal 20w50 running under the same name and weight should signal a "beware when buying".
Kendal is an old school CAR OIL brand name, so it has buyers who want it to do what it used to do back in the day, but they may find they have actually bought a modern SL to SN car oil in an old school Kendal named bottle once they have it tested.
What was not clear until reading this
http://www.racereadyproducts.com/oil--lubricants/kendall-gt-1-motor-oil/ was that even the the very best Kendal racing oils are not full synthetics, but are only a dino/synthetic blend. This means they do not have the full heat resistance of say a Rotella T6.
Kendal is very careful NOT to mention that it is a dino/syn blend on the bottle, but allows your imagination to fill in all those blanks.
They are very careful NOT to mention that the 40 weight Kendal oil is a Car/Passenger Truck Oil ONLY, either. It is not even an HDEO oil.
What? Where did you see that little nugget?Race Ready also brings out the point that NO KENDAL 40W OIL has the amount of zinc in it that we need in a Savage engine, Kendal reserves the "zinc fortification" only for the 20w50 racing class semi-synthetic blend.
Paying "suggested retail" at $11.00 a quart for Kendal is very expensive as you can buy Rotella T6 full synthetic for half that price at your local Walmart.
Buying Kendal on sale at $5.00 a quart means you are paying Rotella full synthetic T6 cost for a Kendal synthetic/dino blend.
And as JOG reminds us, a quart of Rotella triple protection dino oil costs less than $4.00 a quart normally at your local Walmart.
(buy it by the gallon, please -- its cheaper)
Since Kendal apparently gets reformulated frequently, you need to check carefully what you are getting before you go buy some.
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So, in conclusion, Kendal doesn't go on the Savage recommended list because it is too expensive and
it gets very mixed VOA reviews over time (has different formulations on sale at the same time) and
for the ongoing heavy use of a friction modifier (liquid titanium).