Originally Posted By: tpitcher
Soooooooooooooo, The engine that failed with Amsoil, was it engine related or oil related...?
As I wrote in my first post, my friend has experienced three engine failures while running three different oils: HD Synthetic, Mobil 1, and Amsoil.
All three engines failures exhibited the same symptoms: The engine puked its oil out. I don't own Harleys, but I believe there is a cam position sensor(?) on the front of the engine. The part is encased in a plastic/nylon housing and on all three occasions, the oil vacated the engine in this area. From the outside, it looked like the housing could not stand the heat generated by sustained speeds over 100 MPH. My friend does not know if any other parts failed internally as HD required the dealer to ship the engine back to the factory - nobody really got a good look inside.
Did HD, Mobil 1 and Amsoil fail? The only observation made by my friend was oil foaming in the oil tank immediately after high speed runs.
HD, Mobil 1, and Amsoil foamed to varying degrees. The three engines running on these three oils failed. Fourth engine is running on Redline and according to my friend, he hasn't observed any foaming in the oil tank after high speed runs. He also states that he has put many more sustained high speed miles on engine #4 that the other three engines without failure.
I don't know if engines 1,2 and 3 failed because of oil. I don't know if Redline is that much better. The only difference observed by my friend was lack of oil foaming with Redline.
Can this be tied to engine #4 not failing (yet)? Will engine #4 fail on the next 15 minute 110MPH excursion? I don't know. At this point there is no oil foaming with Redline and the engine is intact.
HD never brought up oil failure during the warranty process. My guess is they really didn't want to get into a discussion of modern vs. older engine and oiling system design. Why should they as the number of people riding their HDs like my friend does can probably be counted on one hand with a few fingers left over. Much easier and cheaper to just warranty engines for a few customers