Its easy enough to prove, run the synthetic, check head temp, then change to quality Dino oil like Valvoline VR1 and do the same ride at the same load in the same outside temps and check it again. Dont check oil temp, you have to check the temerature of the engine, because the oil temp can lie to you because that could be the temp of the oil but no the temp of the engine after it hopefully pulls the heat out. Make sense? Kind of hard to describe but pretty easy to accomplish. I personally wont run anything besides VR1 in my personal bike. On a ride to the west coast, I was in 115* outside temps and my valvetrain was still nice and quiet on the way home with the non synthetic VR1 and on the way out in the same conditions with "another" oil it was VERY noisy!

 

I have personal experience doing back to back to back tests, that's good enough for me...

 

All I know is our testing doing back to back tests the quality Dino oil works better. Use what you like, but we never have heat related failures in our builds and we run pretty aggressive combos in our faster street stuff.

 

I've synth in some pretty aggressive street motors and have not seen any heat related failures due to heat. What failures are you seeing?

Heck I own a Onan NHD6300 gen set that got so hot it blew both headgaskets due to Santa Ana winds pushing the air cooling back into the motor. No other issues. I've seen RPMs go up, oil usage go down when going to Synth.. I do know of a guy that oil usage go down a 60s muscle car when changing back to Dino tho.

I'm not sure how you can say head temps differ between oils. Not much oil makes it to the top end. What kind of temp difference were you seeing?

 

We have been using Dino for a long time now , honestly it was before I was even with the company. I just know what I was told and what I personally have seen and My valvetrain on my personal bike is considerably quieter with the VR1 I won't run anything else. I run Synthetic EXCLUSIVELY in everything I own, but not my Harley. My T Man 590 cam doesn't like anything else. I'm not saying Synth is bad, it just isn't very god in Harley engines.

 

From a pure mechanical application standpoint Syn is a contributing factor with the hardfacing degradation on contact surfaces between the cam and rollers not the whole reason. It wasn't designed for what's going on at that point. I will add this, our ever chasing more horsepower can have an impact due to cam design being continually monkeyed with trying to wring a bit more out of these machines, with bad combos increasing the hammering going on at the contact point

The horsepower has negligible impact where the metal meets the metal on cams and lifters, cam lobe design, lifter to pushrod angle ratios, spring tension and seat pressures dictate that, size and go boom is all on the crank components and the lower end bearings.

Debate between import verses on shore products still comes back to source materials, machinery and processes used in the manufacturing. US company using less expensive imported materials and machinery are going have the same problems. Every company is shaving a dime where they can, engineering specs on the paperwork look great and it's been proven in every industry out there the product usually don't live up to them in the long run. We both have long experience in critical industries, you've maybe seen less of it but it is a fact of life.