diverherb wrote:
I just saw that quicksilver makes a 20-50 synthetic oil for the big twin. I have used their synthetic oil in my Mercury outboards for a long time and am very pleased with its performance in those engines. I have never had a failure and I seem to get lots of trouble free hard usage hours out of them. Is anyone on the board using this oil and if so how do they feel about it. Thanks
I've never used/heard of quicksilver oil.
I have had my bike for many years and tried many oils in it.
I've used official Harley Oil.
I've used Castrol 20-50 car oil.
I think - hard to remember... but I think I used Castrol v-twin in it.
I've used mobil 1 synthetic.
I used each for more than one oil cycle.
I rode the bike like I stole it more often than taking it easy on it.
I used different oil filters, Every brand... even ones made for cars.
I never had a problem oil related in all that time.
So what did all my data reveal? Cost. every thing else was the same. The bike ran consistently on each of the setups and the only thing that was different was the cost of the oil.
I'm planning on going back to dino oil products because I want to change my oil more frequently than suggested by the syn people. My oil turns black at around 2.5k - so by 3k I think it best to refresh. The cost is half of the syn oil and the engine gets fresh oil 2x as often.
There are people here that believe best oil to use in a Harley is Harley Oil and I agree. But the bike doesn't run differently - for me - on less expensive but high quality oil products. So I've always known one thing about money - I like it better in my pocket.
So, if you feel good about this product - try it out. Pay attention to things like hot idle and oil pressure.
My bike (used to) knocks when it gets super hot, stuck in traffic for miles in the desert hot during the summer hot- but it did it with the HD oil and the others. The syn did show some better hot hot weather behavior - but I also did a major upgrade to the cam with the syn. So the engine changed and it's hard to say how much the oil did and more likely the cam upgrade made.
I don't like the heat. I avoid it now. So - for me going back to the basics works. Plus If I have to prep the bike for a hot run I'll just change it out to the syn since it really doesn't matter about going back and forth from products.