Your Oil Change Intervals

How Often Do you Change Your Oil?

  • 3000 miles

    Votes: 262 50.2%
  • 5000 miles

    Votes: 126 24.1%
  • 7000 miles

    Votes: 30 5.7%
  • 10000 miles

    Votes: 12 2.3%
  • Whenever I feel like it

    Votes: 34 6.5%
  • Whenever the dealer tells me it's time

    Votes: 9 1.7%
  • Oil needs changing?!

    Votes: 16 3.1%
  • < 3000 miles

    Votes: 33 6.3%

  • Total voters
    522
All Synthetics are not created equal. Some have moly in them. Do NOT use any synth with moly (moly-some thing or other-ine)
I'm paying just about 6$US per gal for 'pure' 93 octane gas. 26 bucks for a fill-up. So a gal of T6 for 23$US isn't so bad.
 
All Synthetics are not created equal. Some have moly in them. Do NOT use any synth with moly (moly-some thing or other-ine)
I'm paying just about 6$US per gal for 'pure' 93 octane gas. 26 bucks for a fill-up. So a gal of T6 for 23$US isn't so bad.
Holy crap. Where are you paying $6 per gal?! And what makes it so pure that it costs twice what "regular" 93 octane costs? If you get it from a regular gas station, you're probably being had. If you're getting it from a special shop, I could see it being a multiple-distilled product, but there are only so many hydro-carbon chains that are liquid at "room" temperature. Low C number hydrocarbons are gases (think methane), and high C numbers are solids (think petroleum jelly). The mid C numbers comprise kerosene, gasoline, diesel and a few others. The reason I don't see what's so special about that gas is that gasoline is just a mixture of different C numbers anyway. Perhaps there are fewer of a certain C number and more of another, but 93 AKI is 93 AKI.
 
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depends on what oil i use! in the bikes i have switched to rotella t6 full syn and plan to go 5k or seasonal, whichever comes first. that is for both bikes. i do the same for my autos at 5k also, my 08 1050 tiger called for 6k which i did (using the recomended syn oil) so i fugure 5k keeps it easy to see on the miles.

the only thing i dont do based on miles is our offroad only jeep. and it gets the tar beat out of it ( rev limiter several times, evey time it goes out, as well as much idleing ) , so i just keep an eye and do it when i feel it needs it.
 
I do my oil changes every 6.000 km's, as indicated by my dealer. The oil is the recommended by Yamaha, and did it with all my motorcycles, only the 125cc (SYM XS125-K) does changes every 3.000km's but it's air cooled.

My riding is calm with some spikes of speed, usually it's 50/50 city and country roads, I don't like freeway at all!

"V"
 
I tell myself that it will be done after passing 5000km and before getting to 6000km but will most probably end up changing it once a year, before storage.

Using Rotella T6, just like my other bike.
 
Been using 10W40 maxima all the way after using castrol full syn for a year. Can't find shell rotella where I'm from as recommended by you guys. 4k-5k oil change for me. Is it bad to use your oil filter for more than 2 times?
 
I was flicking through my Haynes manual this morning (waiting for the bike to dry ready for some wax), and double checked something. Why is there a 2000 mile difference in the recommended oil change interval between the US and EU?
 
Does it have anything to do with the metric v imperial measurement?

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Don't think so. They're both stated in miles, there's no difference in the oil measurements. Just seems weird: 4000 US, and 6000 UK.

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It is a strange one. I think in the distant past this was mentioned, but I can't remember three outcome.

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The only thing I can think of is regional differences in petroleum products. Engines have to be entirely re-tuned for south American, Asian and I think African markets due to differences in fuel contents. Maybe it's along those lines: European oil and American oil (and/or fuel) just has different additives leading to different life spans.

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All Synthetics are not created equal. Some have moly in them. Do NOT use any synth with moly (moly-some thing or other-ine)
I'm paying just about 6$US per gal for 'pure' 93 octane gas. 26 bucks for a fill-up. So a gal of T6 for 23$US isn't so bad.

You know that t6 has moly in it....right? Almost all do to some degree. Theres only 2 or 3 that actually have 0ppm moly.
 
For me 10w30 is difficult to find. My local official Yamaha dealer doesn't stock it and recommends Yamalube 10w40 semi synthetic, which I have used. I currently use Motul 10w40 fully synthetic, I find it works well.
 
For me 10w30 is difficult to find. My local official Yamaha dealer doesn't stock it and recommends Yamalube 10w40 semi synthetic, which I have used. I currently use Motul 10w40 fully synthetic, I find it works well.

Hold on, I just checked a manual for the 2008 model and it does recommend 10w40! My 2005 manual recommends 10w30. In fact, I have a sticker on my bike that says to use 10w30! The plot thickens...

Anybody know why this is? Its the same engine isnt it? maybe some new information made them decide to change it in later years? I might contact yamaha about this.
 
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Yep, same engine. It could be a supply issue. I would be interested to hear what Yamaha say about it.

Well apparently either their entire customer service departmemt is on vacation at the same time, or their entire customer service department is one guy because apparently theyre all out of the office until jan 4th. So we'll have to wait till then i guess unless anybody else wants to try and solve this.
 
Ok, I finally got an answer from yamaha as to why they started recommending 10w40 oil instead of 10w30. Their official response, and I don't think they thought this answer through before sending it out, but their official answer is they started recommending 10w40 over 10w30 because yamaha stopped making a 10w30 yamalube oil, and because they say there isnt much difference between 10w30 and 10w40 anyways.

I'm disgusted by this reasoning.

So if you want an oil that is "close enough" and you want to keep giving yamaha your money, use yamalube 10w40. If you want to use the best oil for your bike, use 10w30.
 
Thanks for the update. Can't say I'm surprised. 10w30 is certainly difficult to obtain here. I won't be buying Yamalube. Quite happy with the Motul.
 
Thanks for the update. Can't say I'm surprised. 10w30 is certainly difficult to obtain here. I won't be buying Yamalube. Quite happy with the Motul.

Anything but yamalube haha.

I questioned them a bit further and found out when they stopped making the 10w30 yamalube, ALL yamaha bikes that previously recommended 10w30 were changed to 10w40 within a year.

I asked if there was any new information that they discovered that maybe caused them to make the change, maybe the engineering department did some new tests or they had customer complaints or something. But the only real reason theyve given me so far is that they just stopped making yamalube 10w30.

I shouldn't be surprised either I guess. Since it's still really easy to find 10w30 around here I'll just keep using that.
 
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