Annual on chain cases/trans, spring and fall on big end...or whenever, 'specially if the old ladies have had their bellies opened for surgery - in which event I wash her out with straight run 40 weight before pouring in the synthetic oil. 50 weight synthetic summer 20-50 Fall.

The Splatman has a nice Mustang 45 there!

 

It's been about 3 months, how many miles have you put on your new to you softail?

 

About 1,200 so far. A friend mentioned the other day he does his at 3,500 although the dealership says 5,000. Being air cooled, and not water cooled I was wondering if 5,000 was pushing it. I wanted to research this question b4 getting to the 3,500 mark. I've been slammed with so much overtime work, and rainy days, I'm finally starting to see a little riding daylight in my future.

 

synthetic oil is good for up to a year before it begins to breakdown, so 5,000 or a little more will be fine in the bike.

 

Oils have come a long ways since the old days of every 3k or 3 months. Shops will still try to sell you on this so they can get more service, but 5k is fine, especially if you are running full syn. Hell, my truck and my wife's car both call for 10k on the engine and 150k on the Trans. Just check fluid levels to make sure you don't run low. IMO that's the biggest risk with running extended changes. And for what it's worth, we have a fluids lab where I work specifically for testing fluids so that people aren't spending thousands on changing fluids in large machines prematurely, and to catch issues before they become catastrophic failures. I have sampled my bike a few times, and even at 5k the oil didn't need to be changed. Your bike might not have the exact same results, but I wouldn't hesitate to run 5k these days between changes.

 

That would cost me 10 oil changes every 12 months. I've ridden twin cams past 100k miles using 5k intervals and full synthetic oil. If an air cooled engine gives me 100k the way I treat it, we're square.

As for the SYN 3 oil. I might change that a little sooner than 5k miles; it's only a semi synthetic blend oil. Not a full synthetic.

Here's the MSDS

Component CAS # Concentration

(1) 1-Decene Homopolymer, hydrogenated 68037-01-4 50% - 70%

(2) Proprietary Ingredients Proprietary Mixture 1% - 10%

(3) Polyisobutylene 9003-27-4 1% - 10%

(4) Distillates, Petroleum, Hydrotreated Heavy Paraffinic 64742-54-7 0% - 20%

(5) Distillates, Petroleum, Solvent-Refined Heavy Paraffinic 64741-88-4 0% - 20%

(6) Zinc Alkyldithiophosphate 68649-42-3 0% - 2%

 

Use a good quality 20W50 syn and 5K is nothing to worry about. I use 10W60 syn and have gone over 6K. I don't sweat it.

 

between 4-5K for me and less if its the end of the yrs...

Price's for a service Varies across the country.. Our dealer only charges $260 for a full service, and only $180 if I do the oils before taking it in..

If you can do it and have the tools and a manual,, then go for it and save your $$$

I also have an INDY I use for changing my brakes, tires, and lubing my cables every yr and He's really reasonably on his labor VS my dealer...


Here's a list of what a dealer or YOU should do and check every 5K...

http://www.adventureharley.com/softa...nance-schedule

Hope it helps ya...

and a service manual is only about $60....
There are many check offs that a dealer does/should do (if done right) other than just an oil change at a service as you see above...





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Changing oil at 2500 miles nowadays us a pure waste...

 

I change it when it`s getting darker than normal. Mileage is not necessarily the determining factor. How hot did the oil get? What kind of riding did I mostly do?... all of the things that determine the breakdown rate of the oil...