Hello Everyone,
I thought I'd post an interesting situation that has me thinking. I did a search on the forums the other night on oil consumption and noticed a couple of people mentioning a few years back how their bike would "spittle" oil specks on their hand(or wall in one case) when putting it behind their exhaust while it was running.
This is the exact reason I did the search, as mine was doing the same thing. I just got the bike last April and have done quite a bit to it since that time but have only put 1000 miles on it(after doing an oil change with Castrol 4T, 10w-40) and still learning it.
I decided to change the oil early and do some other maintenance this week on it.
When doing the oil change, the Castrol 4T seemed VERY thin, which surprised me after 1000 miles-and not much came out. Sad to say, I didn't check the sight glass before the change.
I do ride the bike hard, and it's got 20,800 miles on the clock. It did seem to have more of a gas smell to it that I'm used to on other bikes I've owned...so there was perhaps some fuel dilution.
Also of note: 500 miles on the bike was with the stock filter/header/jetting. When I did a plug check I noticed them pretty rich.
Another 500 miles were done with yosh header/tyga silncer, Factory Pro 1.0 jet kit, & K&N filter. I had put new Iridium plugs on it at that time. I just checked the plugs, they are PERFECT...in fact I've never had a set of plugs check so well in anything I've owned.
So I do the oil change, with Rotella T6(I used the old Rotalla syn on all my other bikes successfully)....fire her up today.....AND THE OIL SPITTLE is gone!
I'm thinking oil dilution via fuel that bypasses the oil control rings(hopefully under stock conditions) and the new, thicker oil obviously doesn't bypass the oil control rings.
Feel free to give me your thoughts/speculations.....obviously I'm happy that the oil spittle issue has gone away...the bike runs like a champ...everything seems good...though I'm wondering if I need to do oil changes on 1000 miles intervals which seems a little crazy to me. (maybe the higher shear strength of rotella is factor?)
Does anyone know if stock bikes suffer from oil dilution issues? My ran rich stock....(I did a carb rebuild right when I got it...)but not now.
Topic: Notes on oil consumption (Read 2675 times)