Plain ol' non synthetic (dinosaur) oil. Castrol GTX seems to be a popular choice along with the HD 360 20-50 (I know... Chavez, Venezuela, Citgo, etc...)

 

Dino = regular non syn oil. Probably used Harley oil is all. I live in Washington and there is a huge debate around here about the positives and negatives of Dino vs. Syn. Either way is fine, just you get a few degrees cooler oil temp with syn, but your valve train can get more noise. Up here we really don't see extreme temps (Well except this year we are melting!) So it's a toss up. My new scoot I picked up yesterday just had it's 5k service and was switched to syn and it is a lot more noisy than my previous sled with dino and 23k miles.

 

"Dino" is plain old "black gold" out of the ground for example HD 360 20w-50

 

Yo. Unless you want a lot of heat and change oil every three thou. miles you don't want to be putting dino oil in the 96 engine. I guess the one exception may be living in or near the artic circle. The lifters are self adjusting. The heads are thin.
A good synthetic with a detergent, mobile, amsoil, redline, etc. will provide heat and wear protection.

 

LOL! Like I said the debate rages on. You do bring up a point that I failed to mention. I use dino because of my warrenty. My bikes get their oil changed by me at the beginning of every riding season and then again by the dealer to keep my warrenty perfect, so with that in mind I choose to run the less expensive option since I am not going for great miles between oil changes. I run syn in my car as I put 100 miles a day commuting to work and back, so I like to double the miles between services.

 

Pezz, I did the same 17,000 mi. two years ran syn 3. The week after warranty off, I am aware of law that does not allow dealer to discredit warranty, I changed to mobile 1. Bike ran cooler and top end sounded much tighter.
At 18,000 mi. I dumped the oil and found a lot of carbon in oil. I believe syn 3 is not a detergent and allowed carbon to build. Refilled with mobile 1 and I'm satisfied.

 

Oh I was just using syn as short for synthetic oil. I also prefer Mobile 1 when I use synthetic oil. It's good stuff.