What Oil Should You Use?

Hey, this is Kevin Bass here from Bass Metal Craft vintage bike addiction. I'm here to fix my hog to talk to you a little bit about oil and oil changes. Now you take your bike in to have a service from like a dealership. It's gonna cost you a couple $100. That's expensive.

You know, most of you with just basic tools and just some good quality oil, you can do it yourself from home. So we're gonna talk a little bit about Biscay's oils. What does it take to make your bike run the best it can, the cleanest it can and last the longest now with anything we always say, follow your user's manual. Look at what the manual say, whether it's a, in this case, a 2004 ultra classic or in this case, a pre or knuckle pan, you know, flathead, all that stuff. Oil is oil and every bike is a little bit different.

So follow your user's manual, see what you need. Um What's nice though is in this day and age. There's a bunch of different viscosity to match your riding condition. So if it's really, really hot out, you want a thicker oil. It's really, really cold out.

You want a thinner oil back in the day, they'd ask you to put little kerosene in your oil because they didn't have all the different viscosity. You put the certain weight oil in and when it was colder out, you water it down with some, uh, kerosene. So it would be a little bit more, uh, looser to lubricate today. We don't have to do that. We have all the different areas.

So we're gonna be looking at, we have, uh, old flathead motor and we have knucklehead motors that we're gonna be dealing with this week on this episode. And, uh, this oil that we're gonna use is gonna be straight 60 70 50 weight. And what's nice about this stuff in these old motors, especially like knuckleheads too. With the cast iron heads is, this is a real thick viscosity oil. It's made to really not break down and stand up.

Now, you wouldn't want to have 70 weight oil. And if it's gonna be 30 degrees out or, you know, really cold out because this stuff is gonna be like molasses. But for general writing purposes when it's summer out, and I do my first oil change on a, so I'll put 58 in as the summer progresses, it gets hotter out, I'll go up to a 68. And if I know I'm gonna take a trip, for instance, right at, uh, my knuckle from here to California. I'm gonna go through the Mojave desert in the middle of the day.

I'm gonna put 78 in because you want that protection when it's super, super hot. Because what'll happen is when that motor gets really hot, the oil starts to break down, it gets, uh, you know, looser sloppier and it doesn't protect as much. So you want good protection with newer bikes. Usually, generally speaking, a good 2050 is a really good alternative and there's synthetic styles, there's regular heavy duty style. But again, follow your service manual, do a little research on what oil is best for your bike and look at your riding conditions and you'll make the, the good choice and your bike will run long.