Oil additives?

I need some advice concering my next oil change,My bike has now done 84.000 miles and needs a lot of TLC to keep it running sweet.
Has anybody used an oil aditive in there bike and is it ok to do so,I have been told by some it will be fine and some have said that it will cause clutch slip and the oil pump will find it hard to pick it up from cold as it is to thick,can anybody give me some first hand advice.

[yorkie_chris]

If the additives did ANY good whatsoever they would already be in the oil.
Waste of money that will be counterproductive and stop the oil already in there from working as designed.

Good quality semi synth is all you need, by all means if the rings are a little worn then change it a bit more often but they call all these additive bollox snake oil for a reason!

If you think your engine needs a clean, you can just use some cheaper oil (halfords semi synthetic) as an engine flush, before puting in good quality oil

Modern oils are very very good these days and adding something could / will only make things worse

[yorkie_chris]

Use whatever you want to flush it out, I don't use bike oil if engine needs flushing I use a 15w40 diesel oil. No point going for owt more expensive than that.

But if the engine is otherwise healthy there is no point flushing it. Just change the oil as normal.

[embee]

As they say above, just use a well known branded quality bike oil. It'll have all the additives needed to minimise wear, corrosion etc.
Castrol, Silkolene, Motul etc

Originally Posted by yorkie_chris

But if the engine is otherwise healthy there is no point flushing it. Just change the oil as normal.

if its changed frequently, it'll be cleaning as it goes along withough gumming up anyway

[yorkie_chris]

Gumming up is a different problem, the dreaded black sludge is a heat issue, you can get varnishing and sludging in turbos... bike engines don't seem too bad for it.

Old CVH ford engine OTOH would turn anything other than fully synth into sludge for a laugh, dunno whether that was tuning or just the engines characteristic.

[embee]

Originally Posted by yorkie_chris

..... the dreaded black sludge is a heat issue, you can get varnishing and sludging in turbos... bike engines don't seem too bad for it.

Old CVH ford engine OTOH would turn anything other than fully synth into sludge for a laugh, dunno whether that was tuning or just the engines characteristic.

From what I recall, black sludge was an issue to do with a combination of heat, fuels at the time (particularly with leaded fuels), closed crankcase breathers (along with relatively high blowby rates), and oil formulations. I think it was at its worst around the end of the 70's and into the 80's, not really an issue today.

As you say, the bad engines were nightmares, I remember seeing photos of pushrod type valve gear where the whole of the rocker shaft assemblies were encased in sludge, evil stuff.

so is halford 10w40 not very good as im just about to by some ? halford 5l for £28 or 4l castrol for £28

Originally Posted by barwel1992

so is halford 10w40 not very good as im just about to by some ? halford 5l for £28 or 4l castrol for £28

As a perennial skinflint I usually find out the hard way that you get what you pay for. Apparently high-quality semi synth is usually fine.

If you're skint you're better changing cheap oil more often rather than stretching out expensive stuff.

I use castrol semi-synth or similar branded. There's a whole load of things that get added to the base oil to improve its performance, and these cost, so cheaper means they have cut the costs somewhere.