Air cooled 4 stroke generator oil type?

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CalicoJack

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Just brought an inverter generator from Aldi and being Chinese the instructions are not crystal clear. It asks for SAE 15-40 oil, but should it be mineral, semi-synthic, or fully synthetic? Of course the Aldi help line isn't sure, but they felt fully synthetic. My concern is that because it is air cooled it will be running hotter than a car; would fully synthetic fail in the hotter temperature, or would one of the oils for Ford/Vauxhall survive?
 
CalicoJack said:
Just brought an inverter generator from Aldi and being Chinese the instructions are not crystal clear. It asks for SAE 15-40 oil, but should it be mineral, semi-synthic, or fully synthetic? Of course the Aldi help line isn't sure, but they felt fully synthetic. My concern is that because it is air cooled it will be running hotter than a car; would fully synthetic fail in the hotter temperature, or would one of the oils for Ford/Vauxhall survive?
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Just use an SAE 15W 40 oil of your choice. It is clearly not important whether it is mineral , semi-synthetic or fully synthetic if its not specified

Any service specification quoted eg ACEA A3/B3

If you use a 15W 40 for anything else, why not use the same ?

I'd guess any 15W 40 oil you find will be mineral, or possibly semisynthetic.

http://www.halfords.com/motoring/engine-oils-fluids/engine-oil?grade=15W/40
 
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Synthetic oils were developed in part to cope with increased tempretures in high performance engines-racing cars and bikes-as well as gas turbine lubrication where tempretures can be really high so no problem on that score.
I suspect any decent oil within the viscosity range would suit-no need to use anything too expensive.
My Kypor 2600 uses Morris 15/40 and is fine.
 
Kipor manuals ask for high quality high detergent of a suitable viscosity for ambient temperatures. I use Sail and trail generator oil (it was free with the generator) which is a part synthetic 15/40 oil
 
If it's new, I'd be inclined to run it on mineral oil for at least the first 10 hours. It's going back 30 years now (nearly) but I worked for a (niche) car manufacturer when Mobil 1 started becoming available. We switched to Mobil 1 and started experiencing high oil consumption problems under warranty. (These were hand-built engines). After discussions with Mobil, they recommended a mineral oil for the first 1000 miles, then synthetic once the piston rings were bedded-in. That obviously doesn't apply to mass-produced car engines any more (and neither does the (now rather quaint-sounding!) 1000 mile "first service" - so they must have overcome the problems, but I'm just wondering whether a Chinese generator engine might be more akin to a hand-built car engine of 30 years ago?

I have a Machine Mart generator which specifies a straight 30 grade oil, but like yours, doesn't say whether it should be mineral or synthetic (although in a straight 30 grade, my choices are limited anyway)! I'm running it on that while its under warranty, but will swap to a multigrade therafter. Whether I go for synthetic or part-synthetic to just use up whatever's in the shed at the time, I'm not sure!
 
I bought thesame generator from AlDi last week. I use, as always, fully synthetic, however, a good 15/40 oil will be OK. I have tried out the generator in the last few days and I am very pleased with it so far. It is a Chinese engine using German specification. Has anyone else bought one of these? Any comments?
 
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