Oil prices

[kasandrich]

Why is Bike engine oil so much more expensive than car engine oil?

I know its different, it doesn't have friction reducing additives.

But it doesn't cost more to leave something out!

Are we as motorcyclists being ripped off for our oil? I think we are, your opinions would be of interest.

[DoodleBug]

I imagine its the old economies of scales kicking in. Having a special plant to produce much less product must eat into oil firms profits. They are practically doing us a favour by even priducing it. At least that is what they will say.

[kasandrich]

The way oil is produced, its done in batches, they will blend a batch of xxx oil, then package it, then another blend maybe of yyy, then another, etc, and in a lot of cases the small cheap own brand oils are produced by the big makers. I was at the Esso lubricants plant a few years ago, and I was shocked at the oil brands coming out.

So an oil that sells in smaller quantities they just do fewer batches. But all batches are the same size, ie VAT sized.

So that doesn't actually ring true....I don't dispute they may claim that, but it is fictitious.

I am sure there is profiteering in bike oils.

[MICKTLS]

one of the main reasons for bike oils being more expensive is volume sales ,if i buy 205 litres of a car oil the price is drastically reduced but most bike oil firms dont sell it by 205 litres ,usually they will only sell in 20 litre drums, unless you want a bunded container then it is sold by 2000 litres at a time from a tanker so then there is no packaging to worry about , hope this has gone some way to seeing why we get ripped off

[Lateshift]

It would appear that the oil companies main argument is the expense of the additive package that goes into Motorcycle oil and the need for additives that have high viscosity retention (due to seemingly hotter engine running temperatures and higher rev ranges causing viscosity levels to deteriorate rapidly).

The following link is a bit dated however studies have been conducted to try to push the oil companies into proving that car oil is bad for your bike engine but my guess is that they simply add more friction reducing additives and base it on the fact that car engines have higher engine life expectancy and therefore need a different additive package :)

http://www.nightrider.com/biketech/oiltest1.htm

[kasandrich]

Well that seems to agree with my train of thought.

But no mention of additives and wet clutches.

[DoGbOt]

Well I recived my nick name " DoGbOt" from my friends after topping up abot 3-400ml of oil in my bike only to discover my brother had kindly moved my bottle along & replaced it with his similar looking 10w 40 for his renault,

The slip additives wrecked my almost new clutch as everytime i went for power it slipped & a big handful off revs left a blue tinged smoke trail behind me,!! after a flush through & a oil change for motorcycle oil, the clutch was never the same but it did stop smoking tho.......

so i dont know what exactly is in it but i would highly reccomend not mixing them up!!