Gentleman ... gentleman ...
My workday is finally done and I'm on my second glass of red wine. I'm in the mood to be a philosopher. Indulge me for a minute.
As I stated earlier, the original post had a bit of an internal contradiction. He said "best oil," then expressed concern about the price of Honda GN4. So clearly the cost/benefit issue was on his mind.
I'll agree with azsynthetic that there are high performance oils out there that may well have qualities superior to Rotella or other HDEOs. I'm not at all clear what
makes them superior, but I suspect there's something in there.
There are many on this forum who will say that Rotella is superior to Honda GN4. It's the same general argument -- one oil is better than the other.
We came to consensus earlier that is a range of performance profiles within the "motorcycle specific" oil. That suggests that just because an oil labels itself as "motorcycle" does not necessarily mean it's "the best." Heck, even Amsoil's famous motorcycle oil comparison test has some well-known motorcycle oils performing fairly low on the evaluation scale.
All things in life are evaluated on a cost/benefit basis.
All things. That's basic economics; that's basic human nature. If I were to come up with a magical high-performance oil that meant no wear whatever, but I priced it at $1,000,000 per quart, no racing team in the world would buy it.
Whether most motorcyclists will admit to it or not, they're making cost/benefit trade-offs all the time with their bike. All products have a range of prices and claimed benefits. Oil is one of them.
Each person has a cost/benefit balance they're looking to strike. Some are more inclined towards the benefit side of the equation; some the cost side. The original poster leaned to cost -- Honda GN4 is relatively cheap oil, and it was
still a concern to him.
Me? I have a $20,000 Goldwing sitting out in the garage and I'm perfectly happy to have $11/gallon Rotella 15W-40 conventional oil in it. My UOAs show the engine is wearing well. I don't claim Rotella is the best oil possible; nor do I claim it is the best price/performer. "sunruh" on this forum has shown that Wal-Mart SuperTech seems to perform as well as Rotella, perhaps better. Go figure.
From a pure geek-head point of view -- and I'm no engineer -- I'm just fascinated by what might make an oil better than others. There's the base stock, of course, and we could argue all day about the various flavors of that. Then there's the additive compounds, and the proportion of compounds, and the effects of the interactions, etc. This is what lubrication engineers wrestle with.
I'm quite certain there is no
one ingredient that is the key. Otherwise, everyone would jump on that bandwagon.
When Rotella went from CI-4+ to CJ-4, they appeared to drop the zinc and phosphorus a bit (probably to get their ash level down to meet CJ-4 specs), but they added tons of boron. I don't know what boron does. I'm curious to know.
So ... azsynthetic ... you make the argument there are finely engineered oils out there that are preferred by professional racers. That may well be true. And the oil may well be the edge that puts them in the winner's circle. I'm not entirely convinced of that, but I'll not dismiss it either.
I'm less persuaded by the argument that small-bore air-cooled engines in the desert and southeast Asia are all -- or most -- running expensive oils. My guess is
some are, but not all. Some are probably running whatever is cheapest. They may not have the exact wear profiles as the more expensive oil users, but it may be perfectly good enough for them.
And that is the key -- use what oil meets your individual cost/benefit threshold and move on.
This wine is good ... and it's a box wine. $14/five-liters. It's not the best I've had, but it's good enough for a glass after work. There it is again ... that cost/benefit balance.
