I am thinking about switching to syntetic oil, on my 1150 now 28000 miles , I was wondering if you guys stay with regular oil due to the fact that it maybe difficult to find on the road, in my previous travel I had to carry oil with me if I wanted to have a good quality one ( syntectic). Same should apply to FD oil has I plan to change it at every motor oil change.
any comments.

Hendi

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You have no need to go to a synth engine oil. You are lubricating an engine only, no clutch, no gearbox. If you still have your original owners manual, it will give you a set of standards to follow when selecting your oil. This is all you need. Current good quality motor oils will be just fine. For your gear oils however, I'd be spending the extra for the bestest synth I can get.(And do)/
Boot.

it does make sens especially since its a bit tough to find the best oil in some country.I wonder if car oil is similar than bike??

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Forget good quality oils in third world as you know from US or Europe. I'm in South-America and the oils I now use are surprisingly low quality.

I was (anti-)amazed by the 80W-90 GL5 spec transmission oil I put in Argentina and Chile - the colour looked like brownish-grayish dirt after only 10,000km! And two times like that on two different oils!

In Europe I get beautiful semi-transparent sweet smelling oil after every 10K I change it (and it's already twice the regularity the BMW recommends - every 20K km).

Engine oil (I always use regular car oils in my boxer): similar results. Gets completely black after just few hundred KM-s, in Europe it's few thousand Ks. In Chile I could finally find US-made semi-synth, but it was silly expensive. 3-4 times the cost of local made (most common here is Brazilian-made, obviously, they have the biggest automotive industry in the whole S-Am) oils.

In Santiago (where I've found the best selection of oils so far) I got to talk with one of the oil specialist and he also says the quality of S-Am made oils around 1.5-2X lower than European/US altough they write the same standard-specifications on the bottles. Be it mineral, semi- or fully synthetic.

Result: I'm now changing transmission (FD and gearbox) and engine oils every 5000-6000km here in South-America because the quality of oils you can buy from oil shops with affordable prices here is just a bit too scary. I run the filter 10K, so 2 changes per one filter. Hopefully this will keep the oil "fresh", before it gets into dirt and the drag-abuse festival starts.

Similar trend I've observed in Middle-East - just no local quality oils available.

If you plan to travel alot in third world and don't plan to carry huge amounts of western-made quality oils, thus personally I believe rather into frequent oil changes in those parts of the world than a type of the oil you use. Which type of oil? This is another silly topic that ends up with 10 pages of complete BS where everyone has its own wiew and "religion".

There's some really good advice in this thread already .
But there are a couple of factors to consider with poorer quality oil
Breakdown of the oil's lubricating properties - you should change it more often
AND because it's not doing as good a job as your normal high quality oil ,the filter will become loaded with wear particles and products of oil combustion so change the filter more often as well .

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Use engine oil for diesel engines as an option.
The beemer engines runs rather hot - an oil adapted to turbo/supercharged engines may be a good choice.

If poor oil - you will need to adapt oil-change intervalls accordingly. It used to be about 2500-3000km back in the 60:ties and into the 70:ties. From the 80:ties the oils were better but still needed to be changed at 7500-10000km. If the new oils from the 90:ties really can last 30-40 000km is something I will not even contemplate to test. For me 5000km is the service intervall, and oilfilter at 10 000 less I can get them cheap enough; when I use any other oil than Omega 757, 777 or Ebony Fine.

Poor oils will deteriorate very rappidly after about 1000km. Hence the old recommendation of about 2500km.

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Albert

Thanks guy, so I guess switching to syntectic oil is no really good as I read somewhere that you should not switch from syntetic to normal???
I agree that in South America finding good oil is tough but in Asia is quiet impossible, my experience in Africa is bit outdated so I can't judge,I do like the suggestion about car oil . what do you use for your FD.

Thanks a lot guys as this is pretty important to me.

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Same as you use in your gear box.

Same oil as used in car/truck FD and gear boxes (manual gear boxes that is ...) HP90.

Automatic gear box oil can be used for fork oil...

For brake fluid .. water and soap ... it will boil if you get it hot .. but you will have some brakes rather than none at all... before putting real brake fluid back in .. flush with metholated sprits ... and I'd flush twice with real brake fluid after that too.

I'd not worry too much about swaping between synthetic and 'natural' oils ... they all are suposed to do the same job.

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Regards Frank Warner
motorcycles BMW R80 G/S 1981, BMW K11LT 1993, BMW K75 G/S

thanks guys for all your advices.
Hendi

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