SOHC.co.uk Forums > CB350/400

Engine oil

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Bodd:
Thanks Bryan, I think it was your post I saw before about the Tesco oil, I will get some.

Clem2112:
Bike specific oils were not in common use when these engines were designed.
I used to change the oil and filter in my 400/4 every 1000 miles back in 1978
Used Esso Superlube 10W/40 which was one of the few that had the viscosity that Honda
specified.
My bike covered over 30,000 miles from new in the two years I had it, never used a drop of oil and the gearbox and clutch never gave any trouble.
You could get 3 OE filters for a fiver and I paid about the same for a gallon of lube !

K2-K6:
I don't feel that the gearbox makes that much of a demand on the engine oil.

Most gearboxes run oil for much longer intervals when they have their own oil and not shared with the engine. Gears have their design specific to the oil type they will run with from the thin stuff in auto boxes up to the EP oils for both gears and axles. These boxes are designed to run on thinner engine oils and only ever have one pair of gears under load at any one time, the rest of the gearset is doing nothing really.

The real degrade occurs from combustion by-products leaking past the pistons, the shorter the journeys the worse the oil will get over the same period, just smell new oil versus used to see how much petrol smell is in there.

If the bike is run regularly and gets hot for longer distances then the oil change intervals should meet the manual spec, short runs and you should be swapping it much sooner to avoid it being diluted and compromising the plain bearings.

matthewmosse:
Open up your average diesel engine, there will be a massive lot of cogs driving the injection gear, or even pto stuff, so diesel engine oil is easily of the speck to cope with what gears need. Also every diesel engine I have opened up has used plain bearings just like the honda sohc ones, but as diesels are pretty harsh these bearings get worked easily as hard, probably harder. Mechanically I would think diesel speck oil is fine. I think I have been told it may have a higher detergent level but cannot see that making much odds if true. The only thing to worry about with oil of the right type  is clutch slip, I have had this from 1 brand of semi synthetic oil, but others have been fine, took a further oil change after dropping the slippy oil to get rid of the clutch slip, no other issues from it. I try to not mix brands when topping up but do shop around for a cheaper deal and I always change the filter with the oil, and have been known to streach service intervals sometimes, still got 180,000 miles out of an engine, pulling a sidecar before getting symptoms of gearbox wear in 1st and second. I used to only use 'proper' bike oil, but switched to cheaper stuff because A, the bike oil started getting ridiculously expensive, and B, every mechanic not actually selling bike oil to me told me for that age bike, you are wasting your money as it was developed for normal oil, not fancy stuff. The speck sheets agree.

Dan:
Always happy to learn something new on these bikes. I only do around 1000 miles a year anyway on mine so I can save a few £ when I do it's oil change over the winter.

Is the diesel oil ok for more modern bikes, out of interest?

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