Learned Collective,
The time has come to put Rosie (long story) into hibernation for the winter. It’s going to be serviced and have a few deferred defects sorted during the closed season.
Part of the service, of course, is an oil change. I’ve seen on other (frankly inferior) sites that the consensus is to use 20W50 grade oil with wet clutch friendly additives because they’re old engines that would benefit from the thicker oil. The Gospel according to Honda specifies 10W40 for this region.
I’ve always used 10W40 without any issues.
So now to my question(s).
Is there anything to be gained from using 20W50 oil? Higher oil pressure, of course, and that’s good for bearings, but higher pressure is not necessarily a good thing when it comes to seals.
Is there anything beneficial to be achieved from the use of additives? If so, what benefit and which additives?
I’m leaning towards trusting Honda’s judgement on this and just using a good quality bike spec 10W40, but I thought I’d solicit the wisdom of those who know more about the guts of these engines than I do. The engine’s done 54,000 miles and except for a new clutch is untouched internally since the day it was built.
