Track day oil life

I was PM'd about whether it was a good idea to change the oil after a track day. Typical situation where there are a variety of opinions. Here's mine.....

I would recommend an oil change after a track day. Running on the track will really heat the oil up due to the extended high RPM/high load operation. That shortens the oil life considerably regardless of what sort of oil you are using.

The ZDP in the oil does double duty as an anti-oxidant as well as an anti-wear agent. More than normal ZDP depletion will result from the extended hi temp operation providing oxidation protection resulting in less wear protection later on and shortened oil life before the next change. Changing the oil is cheap insurance.

It is really hard to predict just how much life you might take out of the oil with a track day or two so just change it. That is the sort of case where I would just drain the sump and refill with fresh oil and leave the filter for the next change. If the deal was for a weekend don't worry about two track days and then the ride home. Just change it when you get home. One thing you can do at a track day is to keep that cooking thermometer with you and stick it in the sump thru the fill port when you come in after a session to see how the oil temp looks. It will give you an idea if you are seriously get it hot or not.

Regarding oil temps: 250-270 F is no problem at all. 280-300 is getting pertty warm. Up to 305 is acceptable but the oil life is getting shortened very quickly at 305 and above. If the oil is running 305 on every track session then synthetic would be a good idea maybe........

One indicator of trouble is if the oil appears excessively thick the next day after high temping it. Usually, if the oil is overtemped it will be fine for that heat cycle but will thicken excessively when it cools down and appear more viscous after sitting overnight. If you observe this or excessive darkening of the oil in a short time then changing it is advisable.

I'll let the admins put this subject in the proper category........

jestal said:

I'll let the admins put this subject in the proper category........

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We still need an Oil FAQ. Who wants to compile ONE?

A special thanks for the answer

FJRFencer said:

A special thanks for the answer

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You're welcome. I didn't see your post referenced until after I had posted this so thanks for the kind words...twice.

With the quality of today's oils and engines, changing after a track day is overkill. I don't drain the Amsoil from my racebikes until after about a 3rd or 4th race weekend which equivalates to about 8-10 typical trackdays. I use the same oil change schedule with the RC51 as the GSXR750 run wfo in the expert classes. That oil drained I then paper filter and put into one of our streetbikes or just dump right into the fuel tank of the Powerstroke. I haven't had any performance issues, gasket leaks, or engine failures in 5 years of racing.

If changing it more often makes you feel better, well, that time would be better spent on de-glazing brake pads or bleeding fresh DOT 4 into the calipers, or bleeding the clutch, or monitoring tire temps, or..... IMHO.

A FAQ sheet on oil stuff? Oh bejeezus.... :wacko:

I don't totally disagree with burner' regarding a track only bike. You don't put that many miles on a track only bike and the oil cummulatively has much less time, heat cycles and miles on it Plus, he is using synthetic, which, as I mentioned, would withstand high temps better and use up less of the available ZDP for anti-oxidation purposes.

My reply was based more on the idea that a person might ride to the track with 2000 miles already on the oil, ride the track day sessions, ride home and then ride another 2000 or so before changing again. Plus, the average street bike rider is probably using conventional oil rather than synthetic for day-to-day use which would oxidize faster and deplete the ZDP faster at the track.

I would still recommend chaning the oil shortly after a track day under those circumstances.

Besides, how can you argue with the miracles that Amsoil is capable of...!!!!

jestal said:

I would still recommend chaning the oil shortly after a track day under those circumstances.
Besides, how can you argue with the miracles that Amsoil is capable of...!!!!

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Roger that, I was once knowledgable in all the Amsoil additive packages and from reading your detailed threads, you hold more oily knowledge than my 160K mile 15 qt. Powerstroke sump!

On the Amsoil miracles I'll only say this as I have seen the anti-Amsoil wrath here on these FJR Forums, for some reason, but it is THE **** when properly matched with a manufacturer's specs. I am a dealer but sell it for my cost + shipping so I don't have to deal with the income tax BS. Anyway.....

burnergold2B said:

On the Amsoil miracles I'll only say this as I have seen the anti-Amsoil wrath here on these FJR Forums, for some reason, but it is THE **** when properly matched with a manufacturer's specs. I am a dealer but sell it for my cost + shipping so I don't have to deal with the income tax BS. Anyway.....

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Yea.....probably from me........

Amsoil has a good product. ...Just that it isn't any better than a lot of the other stuff out there and they charge and arm and a leg for it with their tiered marketing scheme. Most of the Amsoil zealots tend to be dealers....somehow......

Matching it to what manufacturer's specs..??? I don't think any manufacturer recommends Amsoil. I know that they won't even submit their product to GM for confirmation as an oil for the Corvette or Cadillac engines that spec synthetic. Wonder why..???

Amsoil is on the outs with most manufacturers with their insistence of claiming 25,000 mile oil change intervals with their product. There is no question that under certain rare circumstances their oil will go 25,000 miles between changes. But, under those same rare circumstances, most other modern oils will also. Amsoil bases their 25,000 mile oil change claims on their test results from the Sequence 3E tests that only measures oxidation rates. If oxidation were to be the sole determining factor they might have a point. It isn't and they don't. But Amsoil still continues their claims in their marketing. When you read their fine print these days they say to "follow oil life monitor if the vehicle is so equipped" and such but they do not take the 25,000 mile BS off their banner ads. No manufacturer agrees with this as it is very misleading and wrong.

Amsoil isn't going to ruin an engine if you change the oil properly but you can get the same level of protection (or even better) for much less money with a number of other products.

A friend and I bought 04s at about the same time. We both pull the same kind of maintenance. He has 20k on his-I have 80k on mine. He buys his oil at wally world and the little brown truck delivers mine. By his own unsolicited admission my scooter sounds much better than his(less mechanical clatter). Here's the deal. If you want your scooter to sound like a g.d. combine, buy your oil at w.w. or else let the little brown truck deliver it. Try an oil analysis some time.

gumba said:

A friend and I bought 04s at about the same time. We both pull the same kind of maintenance. He has 20k on his-I have 80k on mine. He buys his oil at wally world and the little brown truck delivers mine. By his own unsolicited admission my scooter sounds much better than his(less mechanical clatter). Here's the deal. If you want your scooter to sound like a g.d. combine, buy your oil at w.w. or else let the little brown truck deliver it. Try an oil analysis some time.

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Let me guess......you are an Amsoil dealer also.... Do they include free koolaid in those shipments or something???

jestal said:

Yea.....probably from me........
Amsoil has a good product. ...Just that it isn't any better than a lot of the other stuff out there and they charge and arm and a leg for it with their tiered marketing scheme. Most of the Amsoil zealots tend to be dealers....somehow......

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No, I'm not a zealot-just a big fan. I've run several motorcycles 50K+ miles on the odometer running Amsoil w/o a problem using change intervals of 7,500-15,000 miles. If you want to use dino. oils and change every 2500-4000 miles knock yourself out. The Amsoil products in the long run have saved us time, money, and most importantly engine life.

Been using it on vehicles like a Volvo, a VW, Ford Powerstroke, Chevy 1/2 ton trucks, and on and on w/o any oil or engine related problems for over 10 years now, and *probably* closing in on 1.5 million miles. Manufacturer's recommendations would be what Honda, Yamaha, Chevy, VW, Ford, Yamaha, or SAAB recommend for their vehicles. Say for example Honda might recommend an engine oil spec'd with SL, SG, etc., designation for their motors while VW asks customers to use some more stringent oils spec'd with the designates of 500.1 or 500.2, in the examples of their later model V-6 cars. No, I don't believe I ever said a specific Amsoil product is factory spec'd in a manual, did I?

Yeah, I'm a "dealer" but with zero profits and I have noone selling underneath me. Even if I did have the pyramid thing going, what effect would that have on their products working great?

I call BS on comparing it to other products with my personal experience. In comparing it with other products like Mobil 1, Royal Purple, and Shell Rotella Synth.. Become a dealer for an anuual charge of $20 and you lose the..." costs an arm and a leg." effect and it's all good;save about %22 off M.S.R.P.. Those are all "good" products but really, why settle for less?

You're steering people against Amsoil products for initial cost and the multi-level thing? You're pushing a lot of people in the wrong direction AND missing out on spare time and money. (I know how everybody hates having spare time while saving money.)

Flame suit on. Bring on the Amsoil haters!!

burnergold2B said:

Flame suit on. Bring on the Amsoil haters!!

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It's not Amsoil hate. It's tiresome to have threads always have Amsoil interjected into them...especially by someone selling the product.

No more selling Amsoil in this thread please. We know very well you're a dealer...quit pimping it.

So if I can bring this thread back to the track-day oil change discussion, will someone please tell me what they equate track day oil wear to compared to regular daily driving. For example, would you say that one hour on the track equals 500 miles of regular highway driving?

gumba said:

A friend and I bought 04s at about the same time. We both pull the same kind of maintenance. He has 20k on his-I have 80k on mine. He buys his oil at wally world and the little brown truck delivers mine. By his own unsolicited admission my scooter sounds much better than his(less mechanical clatter). Here's the deal. If you want your scooter to sound like a g.d. combine, buy your oil at w.w. or else let the little brown truck deliver it. Try an oil analysis some time.

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:lol2: :haha: :haha: :haha: :lol2: Pheeeewwww! yer one smart pup gumba :headbonk: Lucky it's Sunday. I've a feeling if it was Friday ........ You'd be toast

:nyam:

:jester:

USMC CWO said:

So if I can bring this thread back to the track-day oil change discussion, will someone please tell me what they equate track day oil wear to compared to regular daily driving. For example, would you say that one hour on the track equals 500 miles of regular highway driving?

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Admin Note: burnergold2B was taken aside on his constant reminding he's an Amsoil dealer and that it's against the forum rules at signup. We wanted to handle it discretely, however he doesn't want to do that so, it'll be a reminder of terms for his first post.


 

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He also wants to claim it's censorship, but it's not. This isn't a free speech issue, but very much a commerce issue. We regulate commerce on this board so you're not inundated with excessive spew from those only interested in making a buck.

Well, I could answer your question with valuable info. from thousands of track miles, but I'm not allowed to because it involves oil analysis from a certain company that the site owner has deemed to be unmentionable.

Somebody else?

I know my wife's Honda Fit has one of those maintennace minders that monitors oil life based off of RPM's, speed, time, etc, etc....I SWORE I wasnt going to follow it as I am used to changing it every 3.5k to 5k depending on the car. First oil change wasnt indicated until almost 10k miles!

C&D recently did a test on one of the GM products (Suburban or Caddy, cant remember which) and they had a 14.1k interval between recommendations from the cars computer.

Still not sure I want to believe it but I am going to stick to the Honda Mfg recommendations.

USMC CWO said:

So if I can bring this thread back to the track-day oil change discussion, will someone please tell me what they equate track day oil wear to compared to regular daily driving. For example, would you say that one hour on the track equals 500 miles of regular highway driving?

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I would also like to see this thread brought back on topic, and specifically have this question answered. Hello, Jestal!??!?

I would assume it has to do with a combination of mechanical forces, hence Jestal's suggestion of switching from dead-dinosaur-juice to synthetic lubricant.

Severe loading of bearings and gears under extreme acceleration and deceleration, gaseous byproducts passing the rings under wide open throttle followed by fully closed throttle, heat cycles, shear action of the transmission gears, clutch lining material, side load of bearings and rotating parts by cornering "G"-loads....what else?

Any engineers or experienced engine builders care to chime in and answer the Warrant Officer's question?

I don't know that I went so far as to recommend synthetic.... I was just pointing out that it might be a viable alternative IF you find you are running the oil temp up over 290-300 with regularity.

The reason the oil gets much hotter on the track is because of the extended high RPM operation. The hydrodynamic bearing film in the oil is actually created by the shear load in the bearing oil film thickness. More load eaquals more friction due to the thinner bearing film thickness so that all the shearing is done on a thinner column or thickness of oil thus putting more heat into that oil. High RPM adds more oil temp since the oil is being sheared many more times in a given period of time. Think about bending a paper clip back and forth. Do it slowly and the paper clip stays cool. Bend it back and forht faster and you can fell the heat at the bend. Crude analogy but hope the point gets across.

There is some additional heat generated by the other things mentioned but just RPM alone will raise oil temp. If you even have an oil temp gauge or measuring scheme you can watch the oil temp remain constant at idle (once it has stabilized) and then start to increase as you rev the engine several thousand RPM higher in neutral. No more real loading on the bearing film thickness but the rapid increase in shearing drives the temp up.

It is pretty hard to approximate how many miles of normal riding is equivalent to one track day in terms of oil life. Just way too many variables. How aggressive the bike is ridden, ambient temperature, the type of track, whether the bike has an oil cooler on it or not, what type of oil cooler, etc.....and, what type of miles are we comparing to in daily use?? Short trip or long trip. Climbing grades out of Death Valley two up and loaded with luggage??

Based on some car experience with the oil life monitor comparing track work to daily use in mixed freeway and urban driving I would guesstimate that 4 or 5 hours on the track might age the oil the equivalent of 1000 or 2000 miles. It definitely decrements the oil life monitor rating much more quickly than normal driving as you can see a clear offset in the remaining oil life before and after track work.

This sort of thing is what makes oil and oil life discussions interesting as there is no hard and fast comparison. You would have to take some oil samples at varying mileage and then take samples before and after a "typical" track day (if there is a "typical" track day...) and compare the results to get some idea. Even then the comparo would really only apply to that bike on that day and wouldn't necessarily apply to other track days.

The key to the answer is how hot the oil gets on the track. If it is a cold day and the oil stays below 270-280 F then the temp alone wouldn't degrade the oil much faster than in normal riding. That is strictly a time-at-temperature issue. On the other had, since the engine is turning far more revolutions and counting cummulative revolutions is the basic fundamental of the oil life algorithms you coul approximate the depletion of the ZDP by looking at RPM. If the engine was averaging around 4000 RPM in daily driving and 8000 RPM while on the track then the oil life would be decaying at twice the rate on the track. Every hour on the track would equate to 2 hours of operation in terms of the additive package depletion of the oil. Since the actual degradation of the oil will be a combination of higher heat and higher RPM accumulating revolutions faster I would tend to triple or quadruple the accleration of the oil degradation on the track compared to street riding in terms of hours.

A 4 hour track session averaging 80 MPH would cover 320 miles. Since the RPM on the track is basically double (I'm guessing here and getting farther and farther out on that limb) then the 320 miles would equate to 640 miles on the street. Throw the correction for higher oil temp in and that 640 would probably double. So one track day of 320 miles would equal 1280 miles on the street.

Once again, this is all a guess....and a very uneducated guess at that.....but that is all I can do having no direct data on the subject.

jestal said:

Let me guess......you are an Amsoil dealer also.... Do they include free koolaid in those shipments or something???

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No but he is my customer and I pay him copious amounts of beer and cigarettes to tout Amsoil on this board. It really gets me off seeing all the people that get so agitated about Amsoil.

As far as answering the question on topic. I would probably not extend drain intervals if you are doing a bunch of track days. I would say keep your drains 3,000- 5,000 miles and you would be fine. Though Oil analysis is the only true way to be sure the oil is doing it's job. Your Amsoil dealer would be able to get you an Oil analysis kit.