I currently use Castrol GTX 10/40,proberably due to good advertising. I used to use Unipart 10/40(red can)relatively cheap but good quality sj rated without any problems. As I dont do mega miles I change oil/filter (honda)once a year when I give my bike a full service.There is one thing ive noticed when holidaying in west side USA and that is how cheap oil is in shops out there I mean like 1/3rd to half our price in UK.
Steve, the reason oil is expensive over here is because we are daft enough to pay the asking price, so let me tell you a little story.
During my racing career I have been contracted to Castrol, Duckhams and Shell.
During my spell with shell and Dugdale Motors, I had my one and only mechanical failure. (a holed piston in a Yamaha two stroke)
After they stripped the motor, i was asked what oil I had been running. I told them Shell, they told me it was'nt.
In the end I came clean and told them it was an experimental oil from a company called Racer Products and I was one of several people asked to test it.
The oil was made by a company called Rock Oil, a small company noted for it's cheap oil (reclaimed and re-refined).
Dugdales didn't bollock me forit, just told me to keep quiet about it and that the damage done had been minimal to what it would have been had I been using Shell.
Several years later I ended up with out a job and took a filling in job in a service station pushing Texaco oil.
I was trying to push 5ltrs onto a guy for £7.50 who told me he would use it if I gave him £5.00.
When I asked him what the score was he gave me his business card, turned out he was conultant to the motor oil industry.
When I asked him why I should give him £5.00 to use our oil, he said he only ever pays £2.50 retail.
I asked him what sort of oil he could buy for £2.50,... £5.00 cheaper that ours and his reply was, Rock oil.
He went on to tell me that he had nothing to do with Rock oil but he used their oil because it was cheap and like all oils in the UK had to conform to a British standard and that the silly prices we pay out for top branded oils was in fact because it was us that had more money than sense.
He claimed that if you change your oil and filter to the manufacturers milage or time scale as per instructed, any cheap oil will perform equally as well as an expensive one.
It's your money
Sam.
P.S. the oil I use in my race motors today is Castrol R40, it last conformed to British standards in the 1940s
