Hi Everyone just changed the oil on my tenere, purchased a large 20 litre container of Silkolene 10w40 Workshop oil last year, its the stuff a lot of bike shops put in there bikes. reasonably priced at around �70.00. i was told at the time it was semi syn, however i emailed silkolene and have been told its a Mineral Based Moleculary converted Base Stock oil which has characteristics similar to synthetic oils.[ what a mouthfull] so guess its just a Mineral oil, so is this stuff ok for the Tenere? funny enough saw a massive drum of this oil, in my local yam dealers workshop and one of his blokes told me Quietly, that this goes in everything at services. bikes only done 500 miles but been left standing all winter so thought id change it.

No doubt that someone more technically-able will confirm, but I'd expect it to be fine for the Tenere. I worked for a few years in a dealers and we, like almost everyone, used it in all 'normal' bikes (ie not race or mx or Prillas & Ducatis etc). That's a bargain price, as when I last looked (I pop back to the dealers now-and-again buit run my own bike tours company now) it was �29 for 4 litres!!

Thankyou for your advice loopydog, its in the bike now anyway, so dont really want the hassle of changing it again, just such a fiddly job on the tenere.
Put any old crap in my old xt, but trying to treat this one better.

Oil variety & marketting over the last 20 years has meant there is a lot of miss conception & miss representation about the oil grades on the market.
Without going into too much detail, here is the run down:
group I: mineral oil (think castrol GTX of the old days)
group II: same as above with less impurities (think current cheap oil)
group III: same as II but with more impurities removed (think high quality mineral oil)
Goup IV: synthetic based fully synthetic oil (think expensive oil: AMS oil, Mob 1)
Group V: as group IV but with a different base element

Because of cost and improvement in oil purification processes, gp III are a lot closer to IV & V (fully synthetic) but cost noticeably less.
Now Castrol was cheeky and started marketing an mineral based oil as synthetic which didn't go down well with Mob. After some legal wrestling, the court decided that the Castrol could brand their oil as synthetic cause it was synthetically derived from a (gp III) mineral oil.
Currently with 2~4 exceptions, all so called synthetic oil use gp III mineral base oil which is then synthetically grown/ manufactured to provide the desired properties.
The biggest con which the motorcycle world has fallen for is the semi synthetic.
By definition a semi is a mix of mineral oil with up to 35% synthetic oil. Most producers put in between 15~25%. In addition, they generally use gp II mineral oil which is very cheap. So the outcome is very cheap product to produce which they can sell as premium grade with premium prices.

Best advise is that if you really want to use semi (for whatever reason) get good gp III & IV/V oil of the same grade and mix them to a 15~35% level.

Sorry this was so long but believe me it is very condensed (relatively speaking)

Realy ?

Lost me at the third line.....

__________________
>-------<

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Thankyou for the info Bonjo, amazing how the price can vary on the top quality oils, have met guys who run there multi cylinder fours on semi syn car oil, which i heard you shouldnt do, something to do with friction modifiers in car oils causing bike clutches to slip. but they never had any probs. funny how much cheaper semi syn car oil, bought 5 litres for �11.00 the other week.