Valvoline DuraBlend Synthetic Blend Oil

I've seen this oil advertised and wondered about it, also. If it is specifically formulated for bikes, it shouldn't have any friction modifiers in it (potential clutch sippage, I think), so it sounds OK to me. My only concern is that this oil seems to be the new kid on the block. My personal feeling is that it should be just fine, as Valvoline is my oil of preference for my trucks for the past 12-15 years. I would feel better about it for the bikes if I heard some scientific feedback on it, however.

I run it in my auto's(past 5 yrs.) but full synthetic in my bikes. Seems to work well.

Here is a question and answer about break-in oil from MotoTune, which is a sportbike oriented site, but IMHO he has some good info there. Just above the start of the questions, he has the statement "3 More Words on Break-In: NO SYNTHETIC OIL".

Q: If break- in happens so quickly, why do you recommend using break- in oil for 1500 miles ??

A: Because while about 80% of the ring sealing takes place in the first hour of running the engine, the last 20% of the process takes a longer time. Street riding isn't a controlled environment, so most of the mileage may not be in "ring loading mode". Synthetic oil is so slippery that it actually "arrests" the break in process. I've had a few customers who switched to synthetic oil too soon, and the rings never sealed properly no matter how hard they rode. Taking a new engine apart to re-ring it is the last thing anyone wants to do, so I recommend a lot of mileage before switching to synthetic. It's really a "better safe than sorry" situation.

MotoTune 4-Stroke Break-In page

IMHO, after break-in, use a cycle-specific full synthetic like Mobil1 "MX4T 10w40" or Mobil1 "V-Twin 20w50" and change it often, but there seems to be quite a few riders that use the Mobil 1 15w50 red cap automotive oil. As you know, the cycle specific synthetic oils cost a lot more than the automotive synthetic oils, but they do offer much higher levels of zinc and phosphorous which are great anti-wear/extreme pressure additives - these additives are limited in the automotive oils to levels compatible with catalytic converters.

Concerning automotive oils in general, the basic story seems to be it is OK to use these oils with a wet clutch if it is NOT marked "Energy Conserving SJ" - the "Energy Conserving" oils have additional friction modifiers in them that may not be OK to use with a wet clutch. For the Mobil1 automotive oils, I think the 0w30, 5w30, and 10w30 are marked "Energy Conserving SJ" while the 0w40 and the 15w50 are not.

Mobil 1 link

I am definitely not an expert on this, but if it was mine, during break-in I would use a good non-synthetic cycle-specific oil, something like "Maxima4 Premium" or "Motul 3000+ or 3000 4T". As you know, change it often, it's cheap insurance and changing it often should help make up for the lower protection of being non-synthetic.

As far as the synthetic blends go, I would have to say I don't know. Roughly speaking, you could maybe lead yourself to call a synthetic blend automotive oil about equal to a cycle-specific mineral based (also called petroleum based) oil with it's higher levels of zinc and phoshorous. Who knows if that's the case, but I have heard more than once that the words "synthetic" and "break-in" do not go together, so IMHO, I don't think I would use a synthetic blend during break-in.

Maxima site

Motul site

Edit: I guess you state above that the Valvoline Synthetic Blend you are looking at is a cycle specific oil, so my rough comparison above is not very applicable to that because it probably has the higher levels of zinc and phosphorous in it also.

OK, after re-reading the first post, I wanted to correct myself and say that the oil I have been seeing as the "new kid on the block" is a Valvoline line that is MC-specific. They have one for street bikes, one for ATV's and one for 4-strokes (and 2-strokes, I think). I see the ads in the latest issues of American Motorcyclist, from the AMA. Sorry to confuse the issue. Also, Palazzi, the links you gave were good, but when I tried to open the technical papers on the Valvoline site, I got an error and only got the header, so I couldn't peruse the papers (like I would be able to make any sense of them anyway!).