Oil for Honda HRX217 with GCV-190 Engine

[Mr. Fixer Upper]

I recently purchased a new mower and went with a Honda HRX217HYA. I'm really happy with the mower and want to take good care of it.

I am looking at the following oils for this machine:

Mobil 1 10W-30
Shell Rotella T5 10W-30 Semi-Synthetic because I have this oil for other equipment
Shell Rotella T6 5W40 Full synthetic because I use a lot of this in my motorcycles and quads so I have that too.

I likely will be changing the oil more often than the manual requests just because it's so easy and I'm not concerned about putting $10 extra a year into maintaining a $700 piece of equipment.

What oils are other GCV-190 engine owners using?

 

[lawn mower fanatic]

Personally I just use the conventional Honda oil, but read this thread....a lot of people use Mobile 1: http://www.lawnsite.com/showthread.php?t=354752 :smile:

 

[Mr. Fixer Upper]

Personally I just use the conventional Honda oil, but read this thread....a lot of people use Mobile 1: http://www.lawnsite.com/showthread.php?t=354752 :smile:

Thanks for the feedback and the link reference. I only have 5 hours on the unit currently and I like to change the oil in engines with non-filtered lubrication systems a few times in the first 10 hours or so get purge the bulk of the wear metal during engine break in. I have zero concern with running synthetic during break-in.

My initial oil change interval schedule
0 Hours Factory Fill of Honda 10W-30
2 Hours Changed with Shell T5 10W-30 Semi Synthetic
6 Hours plan to change again
10 Hours plan to change again
TBD next interval but this may be determined by end of season rather than operating hours

 

[cope784]

I have a similar Honda mower (HRX2174HYA). I plan to use Honda's recommended conventional oil for multiple oil changes during the break in period (25ish hours) and then switch to Mobil-1 fully synthetic. I wonder what robert@honda would say?

 

[robert@honda]

Rule #1: Use SAE 10W-30 oil
Rule #2: Change the oil per the Maintenance Schedule in the owner's manual

Note:
--Synthetic oil is okay, as long as you stick to rule #1 and #2.

 

[cope784]

Rule #1: Use SAE 10W-30 oil
Rule #2: Change the oil per the Maintenance Schedule in the owner's manual

Note:
--Synthetic oil is okay, as long as you stick to rule #1 and #2.

Thanks for the input.