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This article posted on Znen's website,which obviously endorsed by the manufacturer is disturbing to me from many points. I intend to share my thoughts and seek everyone's input on this very controversial subject.

The controversy of crude vs synthetic oil I will not go into, but the other factors they state I will since I find them safety related. For those that do not know Znen, they are supposedly a premium manufacturer in China and their scooters are imported / sold by Valley Scooters in Georgia.

Since Znen is making these statements publicly we must assume that "lower quality China scooter manufacturers" are at best the same.

First, the engine design uses recycled metals which is not high quality compared to the metals used in engines that run on synthetic oil.

Recycling of metals for cars, appliances has been a fact of manufacturing since before WWI, and plastics sometime in the 1970's from my recollection.

The manufacturers using recycled materials are very careful to "purify" the product and remove any contamination or impurities. This process leaves a product that is as good as virgin and in some cases better than virgin materials.

What Znen is saying to me is they don't purify their materials and the quality of the end product is in question. Why this is a safety issue, is IF Znen and other Chinese manufacturers operate this way in one material, do they operate this way on all materials? Even the steel in the frames could be too low of quality and break or bend under less than specified weights or stresses.

This will result to the build up of deposits around the engine.

I have witnessed the results of 7500 mile oil changes in many European cars that spec'd synthetic oils and were driven further than the stated oil change intervals. Deposits in them were no greater than those of crude oil, and in most instances were far less.

The second reason is that Synthetic oils were initially designed for race cars and motorcycles, to protect the engines that run for several hours at extremely high rpms.

The typical scooter rider / driver that I see has two throttle positions they use- idle and full throttle. They do this mainly because they need the power to maintain safe road speeds. Weight of the rider / driver is subset reason, but power is the main reason. So for Znen to suggest that these little engines don't run a high rpm, to me that is just nonsense.

Most of us who have Chinese-made mopeds are aware that these makers of Italian and Japanese models recommend the use of synthetic oil in their scooters. The engines of these models are manufactured from higher quality materials and have closer fitting parts and higher tolerance level so synthetic oil is most applicable to their engines. That is another reason those scooters are so much more expensive.

Here Znen is clearly saying they are manufacturing an inferior product to Italian and Japanese manufacturers and they know it to be inferior. As many of us know this would include the Taiwan manufacturers as higher quality to the Chinese manufacturers as well.

The less expensive Chinese scooters have a great engine; we simply need to use regular motor oil and not synthetic oils.

The big question here for me is that all newer Chinese products should now be suspect as being of poor or inferior quality raw materials, and manufacturing technologies and we should understand that they are a "price point" manufacturing country and NOT one concerned with quality and safety.

I invite everyone to contribute to this as we need input from others and different view points for a thorough discussion of this development and disclosure by Znen.