Watch out when buying engine oils for motorbikes

Motor-cyclists rely on the opinion of their speciality retailer. Therefore all spare parts and accessories offered by the retailer should be first choice. Of course, this is also true for engine oils for motorbikes.

Therefore one should check how the manufacturer advertises the characteristics of its engine oils. Grad. engineer Sven Köhler is product manager at ADDINOL and he knows what matters: "The qualities used for advertising lubricants are often tempting but at the same time confusing. In any case you should pay attention to the facts and not to the appearances!"
If the packaging says 'fully synthetic' this means that the can really must contain fully synthetic engine oil. Oils which are not composed on fully synthetic components must not be described with terms such as 'Synth' or 'Synthoil'. The term "semi-synthetic" is also often misused – some suppliers use this term also for mineral oil based engine oils if the additives contained have been produced synthetically. In the case of specifications it’s the facts that matter: the oil has to meet the cited specifications, wordplays like "corresponds to the requirements according to…" usually indicate that the oil does not really meet these specifications.

Sven Köhler: "The specification JASO MA-2 describes the highest requirements on engine oils for motorbikes at the moment, especially for the application in Japanese bikes. Four-stroke engine oils which meet the American specification API SM as well are the measure of all things currently. With the product line Pole Position ADDINOL is one of the few manufacturers offering such engine oils. For us, facts and quality are what matters; after all we have been developing, producing and marketing high-performance engine oils since 1936."

German article published in World of Bike 04/2011 (view German article here)