Oil Change Interval

[jonboy]

I really thought it must be a misprint.... 'Change the oil every 1500 miles'
What! 4 pts, 2,5 litres of cheap/reasonable quality 20-50 is costing 25 beer tokens for 5 litres 1 gal. In 1500mls thats 1litre per 600 miles or more or less 3000 miles a gallon
petrol consumption 60 mpg Or about , ( a careful ) 50 gallons at 1,50 . a litre ...thats a tenth of your running fuel costs on oil. i realise you're not consuming the oil, but if you change it out every 1500 miles, thats about six weeks riding for me, its a ten percent addition to your running costs.
not to mention the whole mess and work of changeing the oil so often. cleaning the filter, taking an hour or so to do it, My clio has used no oil in 5000 miles, and needs changeing every 10000mls.
My 2004 sportster , pretty much the same.
joking aside about Brit bikes and puddles of oil underneath, thats a hefty oil cosumption. I'll use the old oil (1500 mls) in the various other vehicles around here, but still.....

 

[Rudie]

I really thought it must be a misprint.... 'Change the oil every 1500 miles'
What! 4 pts, 2,5 litres of cheap/reasonable quality 20-50 is costing 25 beer tokens for 5 litres 1 gal. In 1500mls thats 1litre per 600 miles or more or less 3000 miles a gallon

To paraphrase Stelios Haji-Ioannou, if you think oil is expensive, try an engine rebuild.

Your Triumph's engine is air-cooled, the Clio's is liquid-cooled; the Triumph's basic design is pre-WW2, both the Sportster's and the Clio's are much newer; more-modern design and liquid-cooling allowed particularly Renault to build the Clio engine to much closer tolerances than any air-cooled engine maker could hope; both the HD and Clio oil pumps shift a much greater quantity than the Triumph's (the Triumph pump was considered feeble more than fifty years ago), the Clio's liquid-cooling and oil pump prevent hotspots where the oil's maximum temperature is exceeded; similarly, they allow the oil to be warmed quickly and kept at ideal operating temperature, whereas your Triumph's oil temperature depends on ambient.

Biggest difference is filtration - you can see through the gauze filters in the spine and sump but the stuff that does the damage is a few microns, that's caught by the Clio's canister filter and whatever HD fits. However, your Triumph's oil filtration can be improved at reasonable expense; choices are: a micropore filter that replaces the gauze in the bottom of the frame spine - e.g. OIL IN FRAME SUMP FILTER KIT (PAPER ELEMENT) | Tricor Andy and there are others - and/or a filter in the return from engine to frame spine; choices here are between a micropore canister filter similar to your Clio's - e.g. Oil filter kits for British motorcycles then click on the red dot beside "Motorcycle Oil Filter Kits"; again, there are others - or OIL FILTER KIT T120/140/A65 OIL IN FRAME (FITS ON RETURN OIL | Tricor Andy (mounts above the swinging arm pivot, uses the same filter element as Triumph and BSA triples). When Triumph and BSA introduced the triples, same recommended oils as the twins, the recommended oil change intervals were more than doubled (to 4,000 miles).