oil question for 1980 Yamaha XS850

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I ride a 1980 XS850 for which I recently picked up some M1 10w40 to run. Now I have no roi t this oil will perform excellent for me but I wonder if it isn't overkill. Ill be mostly commuting city and highway traffic in temps between 40f and 100f, though the occasional early morning commute may be a bit cooler early or late in the season. The bike runs well and only has 20k with no overly troublesome oil consumption.

Now the m1 vs synpower vs valvoline dino at 40C is 82.0, 95.4 and 104.1 respectively (with 100C gaily close at 13.1 14.1 and 15.2) as well as base vi of 161, 152 and 155.

I figure all three should work well at or close to operating temp and last decently in my shared sump and wet clutch but I want to ensure good low temp performance for those mornings where there isn't time to allow a good warm up before taking off. Did I over buy? The M1 is a tad more costly than other synthetics and naturally a lot more than a conventional but I'm thinking it might be worth it...
 
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Get yourself an IR thermometer and check your cyl head temps.

My XV750 would be about 205'F which IMO was great for aircooled since it matches what you'd expect from watercooled. I could have run a 30 weight. Incidentally the cyl head temp was pretty consistently 140' over ambient after a decent country roads ride.

I ran mostly cheap 15w40 which it found delightful. I was occasionally chagrined to find frost on my seat at work when I got out at 1 am; it shifted a little "crunchy" when cold but didn't break anything.

So, yes, overkill.
 
I have an '81 xs850 and ran rotella 15w40 in both the conventional and synthetic (T6) versions. It's cheap(er) and available at WalMart. I changed it every 3000 miles.

The 850 is a great bike. I'm looking to send mine off to a good home because a bought a BMW K1100rs.
 
The only cold weather problem these tripples had was the inability of the oil to get back to the crankcase until the oil got warm. On a cold engine I would limit the RPM to 3K for the first few miles.
I've had to replace the crank and rods on many of these because of oil starvation to the #2 rod bearing caused by over reving while cold, other wise they are great motors. I put over 100K on my tripple.

Smoky
 
Great replies from all! I'm going to do a bit more searching on rotella but certainly sounds like its appropriate and a significant money save.
 
Originally Posted By: Smoky14
The only cold weather problem these triples had was the inability of the oil to get back to the crankcase until the oil got warm. On a cold engine I would limit the RPM to 3K for the first few miles.
I've had to replace the crank and rods on many of these because of oil starvation to the #2 rod bearing caused by over reving while cold, other wise they are great motors.
Smoky


^^ This ^^

I don't have the same bike as you, but I have Honda's Radial Valve Clatterer (RFVC) which will make horrendous valve noise on morning start up (less than 65 °F) on my daily commute.

I have tried the following oils:
Honda GN4 10w40 (twice, about 2000 Km combined)
Honda HP4 10w40 (about 500 Km)
Shell Rotella T 15w40 (about 1500 Km)
Maxima Premium 10w40 (twice, about 6000 Km)
Mobil 1 Racing 4t 10w40 (about 2500 Km)
Shell Helix Ultra 5w40 (1st time, just changed it this morning)

The 15w Rotella clattered the worst by far, the HP4 glorified cooking oil that Honda pushes second worst (but much better), so much that I changed both of them early because or the clattering.

The Maxima Premium Mineral clattered the least, the M1 clattered slightly more.

The 82 cSt of the M1 really helps if you are using the bike to commute and it is a model that may suffer from cold flow problems. It runs me about $12 a quart here in Mexico and I don't believe it is overkill at all. The Maxima costs me about $8 quart, but I have concerns about using it for a full year since it's not synthetic and we have abnormally high sulfer in our fuel.
 
Id say Rotella Synthetic T6 5w40 in the colder weather, and Rotella 15w40 in the summer months when its warmer. Both state they meet the JASO MA wet clutch requirement and have returned good numbers in used oil analysis tests. The 5w40 would get the oil to where it needs to be quicker, although some people say it shears a little faster so you may have to change it a little sooner.
 
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