Total Motorcycle Community Forums

How often (in miles) do you change your oil if you use synthetic (any brand) ?

I'm going to change over from regular bike oil and want to know what most others are doing.


Dan

First how many miles on your VN? High mileage bikes should stick with conventional because it's a bit thicker than synthetic, meaning it won't leak out of gaskets as easily. Other than that, I'd do the usual 3K miles unless you buy the really nice stuff, then I'd go up to 5K between changes. And when I say nice stuff, I mean like Royal Purple.

i do not use synthetic in my motorcycles too much of a risk of clutch slippage

The reason I posted this question is because in the manual for normal bike oil it suggests to change every 5,000 which seems high for normal bike oil.

Now I change it every 1k because it easy for me with my own garage and a cheap way to extend the life of the bike.

I'm going to be moving from a house to a apt so I won't have garage access anytime I want. So I thought it might help if I just changed the oil less often by switching to synthetic.

Am I off my rocker either by following the manual or exceeding it using synthetic oil?

Nah 5k in the service manual means 5k... I wouldn't worry at all about going 6 unless you ride like a bat-out-of-hell.

Every 1K is way overkill, no matter what you're running.

My bike has a 3,500 mile interval, per the manual, for regular oil. I follow that same interval with the Suzuki Synthetic.

There is an outfit that you can send a sample of oil to for analysis, they'll tell you if your oil is going to long between changes. Blackstone Laboratories