[sruppen]

Hi All,

I'm a new M800 owner as of this week and although I've seen the topic of "break in" discussed in various places, I'm still a little confused by some of what appears to be conflicting advice. Obviously I'd like to do whatever will harm the bike the least and benefit performance the most. Ran it through the gears with throttle variation over the range (keeping it under 6K) and have about 35 miles on it so far.

Of course the Ducati web site and the dealer don't believe an oil change is necessary until 600 miles or so, but I've seen advice to the contrary where at 20, 100, or 200 an oil and filter change might be helpful to get rid of any significant initial metal. So question one is whether or not an oil change before the 600 mile service has some significant benefit?

Question two then would be what oil to use if a change before the dealer 600 mile service is a good idea. I've seen the holy war about oil as well, but am still a bit confused as I've read that Ducati puts synthetic in at the factory (will try to confirm with Ducati and/or dealer), the dealer tells me that once you use synthetic you can't go back to regular petro oil (didn't ask technically why, but will), and some postings I've read suggest breaking in with petro oil. Again, the dealer says no change is really necessary until 600 and then they use semi-synthetic Motul, so suggested if I wanted to do one myself before then to use the same.

Any advice from first hand experience regarding whether or not to do a oil and filter change before 600 and what brand/type/viscosity, etc. will be much appreciated! Pros and Cons identified would be wonderful.

Thanks in advance for reading and any help offered!

 

[monstermash]

Ducati recomends synthetic oil, thats what shell advance 4 is. My dealer put in full syn at 600 mile service. I changed oil and filter at 250 miles and used 20/50 dyno, and will change every 2500 miles with synthetic. Syn oil is fully compatable with dyno oil. theres no reason to go back to dyno but it won't hurt your engine. I'll be using moble 1 15/50 auto oil. other opinions will differ. the important thing is that you change oil and filter on a regular basis, 2500-3000. and eng will last a long time.

 

[MarkV]

follow the manual... follow the break in procedure... ducati reccomends what oil viscosity to use for various climates in the manual also. synthetic oil resists thermal breakdown better than dyno oil. it don't matter what brand of oil you use as long as you use the appropriate viscosity and you change it plus the filter regularly.

 

[Gman86]

It might be overkill, but you can never go wrong changing your oil, whether its at 20, 50, 100, or 3000 miles. Also, when you do change your oil, check the oil screen to see if you have any unusually large chunks of metal.

 

[Jason_S4]

Where is the oil screen located? Should it only be checked at oil changes or can you change/check it at any time?

 

[sruppen]

Jason,

I too needed a pointer or two in that direction. If you use the bulletin board Search function and put in the term Oil Screen as the search words (and maybe modify the # of days to search through to say 180 and results to something greater than 25) you'll get quite a list of hits and can then dig into a couple threads for some pretty detailed discussion on the oil screen topic.

From what I read the newer Monsters likely all have a screen behind the plug just below the oil level window on the right side of the bike. There is a wire running into that plug (goes to the instrument cluster for oil temp). What I've read so far suggests making sure to disconnect that wire, then undoing the plug (16mm hex socket I believe), cleaning the screen of any large debris and maybe a quick soak in some sort of solvent (gasoline even), and then replacing.

A couple good posts with lotss more on the subject are "motor oil" started on April 9 and "Oil Change Procedure - oil screen" started on June 4th.

Hope that helps...