WestEdge Cycle in Anacortes, Washington, recently teamed up with Full Circle Synthetics to do an informal test of AMSOIL and Red Line motorcycle oils. This unscientific test was for the benefit of the owner of WestEdge, Rob Westergard and myself. We tested the oils on a motorcycle Dyno that Rob routinely uses to test and tune his customer's motorcycles.

Preparing for a trip afforded the opportunity to do the testing. Rob had his wife's 1000cc Ducati lashed to the Dyno on a beautiful summer morning. The bike had used Red Line oil Rob had installed the season before. This bike calls for a 20W/50 or a 10W/40 motorcycle oil. AMSOIL has a dedicated motorcycle oil in both viscosities. I believe the Red Line product is simply a 20W/50 racing oil not specific to motorcycles. After a warm up, Rob put the Ducati through three consecutive tests and recorded the results. Then drained the Red Line oil and installed AMSOIL 20W/50 motorcycle oil. With the AMSOIL product installed, Rob duplicated three back to back tests to compare results.

First the results and then some discussion about them. Rob and I came to the conclusion that the results we came up with were virtually identical. The AMSOIL product showed a .61 increase in horse power, the Red Line product resulted in .33 increase in torque.

As I said in the opening these tests were unscientific at best. The Red Line had a seasons worth of use, the AMSOIL was right out of the bottle. Same filter was used, a K&N model appropriate for the bike. We felt the weather/outside air temperature was negligible. And all tests were duplicated as much as possible. As far as warm up and duration the general atmospheric conditions remained the same between shut down and oil and filter change between tests. Rob and I speculated the lower viscosity 10W/40 may have given an edge to one or the other brand of oil, but that is pure speculation on our part.

All things considered, it was an interesting day to participate in person, and to be part of a real-time actual Dyno test. The unaltered results revealed nothing being proved one way or the other. If you have a need for motorcycle maintenance or repair I highly recommend WestEdge Cycle.


WestEdge Cycle
Rob Westergard
360-299-3489

Seems like I am always having to defend AMSOIL and its products. AMSOIL has been around since 1972, but some people still haven’t tried it. I can understand a skeptical point of view. Why change? I would venture to say that 99% of our customers are happy with AMSOIL products, many of which were the biggest skeptics before changing to the best lubricants in the country.

Take the case of a skeptical Harley owner I'll call SO. On the advice of a well-known Harley mechanic, and a hard-core believer in AMSOIL motorcycle oils, he recommended SO try AMSOIL in his bike. And SO did. 

The story goes that it was time for service, and against the advice of the mechanic, SO decided to do his own servicing since he had a trip planned the next day and had to get things taken care of. SO assured the mechanic that he knew what he was doing and left on his trip as planned. According to the mechanic, when SO returned from the trip, SO explained that the noise and improper operation of the transmission started immediately after starting out and never got better or worse throughout the trip of approximately 1000 miles.

The rest of the story – after the mechanic had a chance to investigate, turned out SO had inadvertently added the transmission fluid to the engine. He overfilled it, leaving the transmission empty except for the previous AMSOIL fluid residue. At that point it was plain to the mechanic, myself and SO why the motorcycle was acting strange.

We all agreed that improper servicing was the problem, NOT AMSOIL. After proper service the bike was operating better than ever. Our advice–leave the servicing of expensive machinery to the experts. And after all things considered, we concluded the only reason the bike didn't breakdown was that AMSOIL had been used and protected the transmission with just AMSOIL residue. 

In conclusion–everyone involved learned a valuable lesson and AMSOIL saved the day. And, most of all, don't jump to conclusions until you get the rest of the story!