A discussion on oil

[MCN]

[weasley]

[BusterGonads]

[Polarbear]

[MCN]

[stevo as b4]

I'd be more concerned about maintaining a healthy oil pressure, and flow along with maintaining a healthy oil level in the sump/tank and also the coolant level and temperature, than oil change intervals.

Skip an oil change or go past the manufacturer's service interval a bit and your engine won't die.

Lose oil pressure at say 6000rpm under load (for example track day driving a normal car on very sticky tyres and cornering hard when the oil might run away from the pick up strainer) Well that's a lost engine in seconds possibly.

Or 5min at 70mph down the motorway when a cooling hose comes off, another possible engine beyond repair.

Or go for a top speed run on your bike and have something like a fuel pump failing or dropping pressure, there's your melted engine. Cam chain tensioner skips or fails etc etc.

Far more serious things for the worriers and anal obsessives to get autistic about than oil change intervals.

[someone]

well "over the Atlantic " cars are still produced we didnt sell our shitty compaines to the chinese and cried about it .

i will leave you all to your tea party and go crack a beer with less uptight peope .

i never talked to a group of uptight people like this in my whole life ....

for the sake of your resources stop showering to save a polar bear or something

and people call us rude ....
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EJ6 FOREVER AND FOREVER A HUNDRED YEARS EJ6.

[Sister Sledge]

'Sups some tea from my finest bone china'. I knew it - they're full of sh*t and humping Bob the oily man.
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CCM 404 DS

[blurredman]

https://media1.tenor.com/images/ba38850bff2c5f0686f07f9cd50a5a8f/tenor.gif
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CBT: 12/06/10, Theory: 22/09/10, Module 1: 09/11/10, Module 2: 19/01/11
Past: 1991 Honda CG125BR-J, 1992 (1980) Honda XL125S, 1996 Kawasaki GPZ500S.
Current: 1973 MZ ES250/2 - 17k. , 1979 Suzuki TS185ER - 9k, 1981 Honda CX500B - 91k, 1987 MZ ETZ250 (295cc) - 38k, 1989 MZ ETZ251 - 49k

[MCN]

[weasley]

[BusterGonads]

I'm a fan of many Americans. There are some completely brilliant engineers - otherwise we would not have just been celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the most brilliant and audacious engineering achievement of all time - men walking on the Moon and coming back alive - loads of them - I'm not even sure how many individuals went there and came back. There are loads of clever Americans.....


But - there is also a big issue of people rejecting facts and evidence in favour of homespun garbage and religious fundamentalism. This is an interesting and bothersome problem. Bob the oil guy is an opinionated ignoramus, and so are his fans. One of the weirdest things is the American obsession among the ignorant that they can develop some 'trick' or other that big oil, big pharma, big Doctor and any big corporation don't want them to know.

My view is that if Honda specify some interval for doing oil changes, they probably have good reason for specifying it and that the reason will be based on real engineering issues or they wouldn't have specified it. Likewise if they specify a particular standard of oil rather than another.
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2016 Triumph Street Twin; 2000 Honda CG125; 1997 Honda Nighthawk CB250

[BusterGonads]

[someone]

[MCN]

[Easy-X]

Getting back on track, maybe! Any tales of "I wished I'd changed the oil more often" ? Generally everyone seems to have a good handle on the needs of their bike(s)
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Husqvarna Vitpilen 401, Yamaha XSR700, Honda Rebel, Yamaha DT175, Suzuki SV650 (loan) Fazer 600, Keeway Superlight 125, 50cc turd scooter

[MCN]

[Shaft]

[weasley]

One of the jobs I have done as part of my career in lubricants was heading up the analytical laboratory that, amongst other things, investigated serious problems in which the oil was implicated. We always discovered that the cause of the failure was down to some other factor - misuse, misapplication, contamination etc. The oil held the evidence, but was never the cause. The right oil, used the right way, should see you right. As Shaft says though, you need to be clear on what "the right way" is, including any severe use and top-up requirements.

Max to min of a typical Eurobox car engine is usually around 1 litre. If you have 1 litre missing from a 5 litre oil charge, that's 20% of the oil gone. That leaves the remaining 4 litres to do the work that 5 litres could be doing. Hence my advice, when asked, is to keep an engine topped up to the max mark, rather than wait until it reaches min before adding a slug. Every top-up you do is like a shot in the arm for the oil, adding fresh additives and base oil as well as getting the level up.
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Yamaha XJ600 | Yamaha YZF600R Thundercat | KTM 990 SMT | BMW F900XR TE

[Easy-X]

Reminds me of my first programming gig...

One day I was wandering through the office - it's amazing how much work you can avoid if you socialise with co-workers - and one of the sales bods was lazing about.

Not out on the road?

"Nah , car's fucked."

Oh? What's up with it?

"Fucked if I know!"

Turns out the primary problem was lack of oil When I caught up with the sales guy later he got quite shirty! "Not my fucking job, do I look like a fucking mechanic?!"

I was pretty young but it was at that point in my life I resolved never to be "that guy"
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Husqvarna Vitpilen 401, Yamaha XSR700, Honda Rebel, Yamaha DT175, Suzuki SV650 (loan) Fazer 600, Keeway Superlight 125, 50cc turd scooter

[Easy-X]

[MCN]

Not engine oil but an interesting note.

We run a big spur gear by an electric motor on drilling equipment. The 'Top Drive' that turns the drill pipe with the bit on the end,

The most common major repair for top drives is gear bearing or spindle bearing failure.

We had two drives with catastrophic bearing failure after only 6 months drilling from brand new.

We replaced the bearings and some cnut suggested it was the bearing manufacturer was the problem.
I use bearing regularly and bearings do not really fail due to manufacturing reasons. Even the Chinesium ones.

There is almost always another reason.

Overloading. Running a bearing longer than it's lifetime, the wrong lube or no lube.

Common bearing failure is oil contamination.

In drilling we use mud a mixture of clay and oil or water as the solvent and some other chemicals in there to.

We sample every month and act on results.

We were getting bad samples showing clays in the gear oil.

We just drain refill with fresh until we can pull the drive out for shop repair. It takes about 10 days to swap the bearings and at US$70000/day it's a bull-buster for down time.

We sent oil for more stringent testing at Mobil and Castrol to get balanced report.
Both came back with the same advice.
Water in the oil was more than 2%

The oil manufacturer told us that 1% oil was the maximum they allowed before the oil loses it's properties.

The gear boxes hold about 50 litres. 1/2 litre of water killed the oil.

There were additional factors causing early bearing failure so a stack up of issues culminated in the crash.

It cost $millions to rectify. parts, specialists, downtime.
But illustrated to all the Luddites how important oil is for the life of the equipment.

Another bonus that came out of this was that we started using the multigrade gear oil we had in the warehouse that a couple of us moaned about using. It would work for summer and winter +50C - -50C.

They'd previously said 'it was too expensive'.

Not as expensive as a lube crash.
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Disclaimer: The comments above may be predicted text and not necessarily the opinion of MCN.

[The Shaggy D.A.]

[BusterGonads]

[BusterGonads]