Richie D
CBT failure
Back on the Road
Posts: 14
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Post by Richie D on Nov 24, 2015 5:07:43 GMT
Hiya people, what engine oil do you use? Do you recommend any additives?
I want my 900 running as well as it can & want to get it as nice as I can too. Ive only had it 2 weeks now and there are a few little unimportant jobs I can do on it also. The last man dropped it and now the fairing is out of line with 1 of the support metal straps on the fairing frame has snapped, it's still secure.
Ta..
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Post by chris900divvy on Nov 24, 2015 18:07:57 GMT
Personally I just use the cheapest 10/40 I can get hold of, Wilko 10/40 semi synthetic seems to work very well and 5 litres can be had for £15. All I do is stick to the 4k service intervals, change the filter at 8k and top it up when needed! The fairing frames can be a bit of a pain, my first one rotted through with the replacement a couple of coats of hammerite seems to have kept the rot at bay.
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Post by bobh on Dec 18, 2015 23:35:30 GMT
Definitely NO additives - they can cause clutch slip.
As Chris says, pretty much any 10W/40 will be fine as long as it's changed regularly. A bike-specific oil should theoretically be a better option, but plenty here use car oils without problems. The 900 engine goes on for ever without being mollycoddled with fancy stuff.
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Post by cam7777 on Dec 19, 2015 9:38:51 GMT
Just don't use car oil...never ever....
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Post by teejayexc on Dec 19, 2015 20:31:12 GMT
Just don't use car oil...never ever.... Why ?
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Post by mlbv on Dec 19, 2015 21:27:12 GMT
cheap car oil is closer to the recommended bike specific oil than the expensive car stuff... the problem with using decent car oil is the friction reducing additives which can knacker the engine over time, there are fewer of these additives in cheap car oil... I think it is to do with the extra heat between the clutch plates (which doesn't affect cars as they don't have a wet clutch like we do) causing the additives to break down and turn into something else (I'll ask one of my chemistry buddies to talk to one of my engineering blokes) and these new reaction products are what causes harm...
I use rock oil proper bike stuff, the local place (Watling tyres in Catford, south London) does it for 20 quid for four litres, Although i only ever have to top up if I do a long motorway run at at rate of knots I choose not to disclose, but suffice to say it is over 7 grand for about 130 miles... riding around town and the occasional short blat on a motorway the level doesn't really move enough to warrant topping up... in fact, over the last 1000 miles or so it hasn't dropped enough to notice, but i went up from London to about 20 miles north of Nottingham yesterday with a flask of tea to have a cuppa with the old man (rip) and had to top up when I got there and had to do the same when I ot home, the level dropped from about three quarters full between the lines in the window to about a quarter full.... The bike probably wouldn't use much if i kept to around 5-6 grand on the motorway
The tea was still drinkably hot though!!
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Post by bobh on Dec 20, 2015 21:53:17 GMT
Mlbv (how do you pronounce that?) is right that the major difference between (most) bikes and cars is the wet clutch, so very "slippy" oils and additives are out. Bikes also share the engine oil with the gearbox (as did the Issigonis Minis etc. of old) so there's a greater amount of shearing action going on there, which will destroy some types of additive, e.g. the long-chain polymers that are used as viscosity index (VI) improvers. So, in technical terms, you want something that's nice and gooey but not too fancy - decent quality mineral oil, in fact, with or without a bit of synthetic stuff to improve its life.
If you look in any Yamaha Owner's Manual (most are downloadable free from Yamaha) it gives viscosity ranges for different operating ambient temperatures (10W-40 covers just about anything you'll encounter in the UK) and specifies API service S* or higher - * being dependent on what was current at the time the bike was made. These are essentially car grades - there is no mention of having to use a bike-specific oil, just (in some cases) a note to avoid oils with friction-reducing additives.
So for my MT-03 the manual specifies API service SE, SF, SG or higher, while for the later Fazer8 and the very recent MT-07 they recommend (but don't insist on) Yamalube - well they would, wouldn't they? - and specify API service SG or higher. They also mention JASO MA, which IS motorcycle-specific.
Coming back to viscosity index, almost all modern motor oils are "multigrades", that is to say they contain VI improvers. These are basically additives that help the viscosity to hold up at high temperatures better than the base oil on which they are formulated. So, in simple terms, a 10W-40 oil will probably be based on an SAE10 grade straight mineral base oil, but thanks to the additives its viscosity at high temperature is as good as that of an SAE40 straight mineral oil. In other words it doesn't get too thin when the going gets hot. But as the oil ages, and the effects of mechanical shear and temperature breakdown start to take their toll, the additives become less effective, so a 10W-40 becomes a 10W-30 then a 10W-20 and so on. Ever changed the oil on a car which was well overdue, and thinking that the stuff that was running out was more like water than oil?
Now on the face of it you might think that a 5W-50 oil is superior to a 10W-40 one, because it will give easier cold starting and at the same time provide better protection at high temperatures. But as I've explained, as the oil "wears out", it tends towards the characteristics of its base oil, in this case SAE5. So unless you're going to change the oil every few operating hours, as MX and track people do, you're better off using the "heavier" 10W-40 oil and maybe putting up with letting it warm up a bit longer before setting off.
Fully-synthetic oils, and the term covers a wide range of, essentially, chemicals, are made to hold onto their properties for longer than mineral oils. All those that are currently used for automotive applications are compatible with mineral oils. That's not always the case for industrial lubricants, so beware of trying that sample of special stuff that you got from the lube co rep that came into work. Synthetics are the way the car industry is going, with low viscosity (for minimum drag and hence economy) full synthetics (for long life and high mileages). They can get away with this because manufacturing tolerances and Q.C. for engine components are infinitely better than a generation ago, and most car engines have a relatively easy life - halfway up to the red line is about as far as many ever get. It's not so easy for bikes, even though they are made at least the same degree of precision, partly because of the aforementioned sharing of oil with the clutch and gearbox, and partly because most are used in a rather more, ahem, sporting manner.
By adding some of these magic chemicals to mineral oil you get halfway-house "semi-synthetics", which are an economical (i.e. cheap to produce, so higher profit margin) way to get decent lubrication over extended mileages. Remember, it's only in the last decade or so that Yamaha have gone up from 6-month/4000 mile to 12-month/6000 mile changes, and even now many other makes specify lower mileages.
So I come back to where I started. There are no "magic bullets" for bikes like the Diversions. A fairly basic 10W-40, changed regularly, is as good as it gets. And always change the filter at the same time - it may not be completely clogged (in fact hopefully it's nowhere near that) but it will at least have some clutch debris in it. Plus it's full of old oil which will dilute the nice new stuff. And on a bike that's used year-round, the canisters have been known to rot through after a winter's-worth of salt exposure.
And with that thought, I'll leave you.
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Post by HRHpenfold on Dec 21, 2015 13:06:25 GMT
be careful that you don't put in what is specified for modern car engines, as most are zinc reduced to spare the catalysts, zinc is a requirement of oil used in divvies,
so I would certainly not take it as anything better than SG is required,
me I use 10w 40 to a SL grade, but I buy it in 25 litre tubs around £30, and add a bottle of redline break in oil additive, which is a high zinc additive
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Post by mlbv on Dec 21, 2015 14:52:08 GMT
mlbv stands for my little brother's van.... some people call me emelle beevy, and a few are under the impression that my name is actually emelle.. i call them something else...
ah yes, although cogs are big lumps of metal that appear to mesh together like interlocking fingers, the tooth to tooth contact area is incredibly tiny at any given moment and along with the shearing effect as they mesh together, there is a tremendous amount of compressive force up to 90 heese being transmitted though a contact patch about the thickness of a sewing needle... the complex polymeric molecules can become damaged under these sorts of pressure...
i am still offering up the localised heat (which is of course dissipated very quickly) as a contributory factor to the additives being broken down into undesirable contaminants...
oh, and some bromantic geek love from me to you for writing all of that... i like you...
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Post by bobh on Dec 21, 2015 20:56:48 GMT
mlbv stands for my little brother's van.... some people call me emelle beevy, and a few are under the impression that my name is actually emelle.. i call them something else... i am still offering up the localised heat (which is of course dissipated very quickly) as a contributory factor to the additives being broken down into undesirable contaminants... Thanks for the explanation. I hope your little brother doesn't object to you appropriating his transport. Yes, heat is definitely a factor, possibly more so in air-cooled engines like the Divvy, at least when used in hot climes (you wish!) When I worked on industrial hydraulics many moons ago, you could always tell the ones that had been allowed to overheat from the manky smell of the oil, which had usually also gone much a darker colour. Again, it wasn't so much the bulk temperature in the reservoir as local hot spots, e.g. incorrectly-set pressure relief valves that were constantly spilling over. More of a problem in closed circuits, and even now you may well find a warning in your car's (or van's) handbook not to hold the steering on full lock for more than a few seconds to avoid overheating of the fluid.
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Post by mlbv on Dec 21, 2015 22:14:58 GMT
ah, i'd better give a brief explanation, when i inherited the van, i decided to turn it into the van my brother would have created, he searched for months to find one with air conditioning and other bits and pieces, and he was well chuffed for the following six weeks until he was killed, crushed against the back of it while at work... as i knew nothing about vw's or diesels, i decided to learn everything i could, and the name i chose when joining the caddy forum was 'my little brother's van' as a tribute to what it means to me... i have become quite a guru on the caddy scene over the years and so many people call me mlbv i might as well use it elsewhere... news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/4636291.stm
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Post by GAv on Dec 21, 2015 22:26:22 GMT
What the cogs in my brain cannot quite mesh over, and syncronise over is why cars have dry clutches and bikes wet ones?
For example my VTwin Rotax Aprilias which have hydraulic clutches, in the case of the Futura its a fath to get at, after removing a load of panelling the bleed nipple is behind the rectifyer, need fluid to activate. The bleed nipple was seized on it and I got a whole plunger unit second hand off Fleabay just for a nipple that would bleed. Cog engagement from and to neutral is also a common buggbear as witness having restarted it at a meet took some coaxing and a bit of embarressment, with several onlookers, however the restart in gear with clutch lever engaged switch doesnt work on that bike and even on the Mille having stalled it after being cut up by a car, left me in too high a gear to continue without getting down from 6th to 2nd or 3rd even. I just fitted a new Solonoid to it as it started the ol just clicking trick and would start with a screwdriver betwixt the terminals. the seal and plunger rubber plunger shaft surround, can fail so having a spare unit isnt a bad thing either way with both bikes as the internals are identical . The other thing they are notorious for is the bearings on the Spragg clutch drying up and going and leaky fluids in part others cannot reach. Best lubricate those with copperight grease.
Taking another example the XJ600 I just aquired, the guy said it needed a new clutch cable(and one was included) and yes the lever feels stiff but we could at least drive it most way up onto my bike trailer.
A newish neighbour appeared to help me off with it and also said if I decide to sell the Mille to give him first refusal. My supposition that I might be better off with a smaller lighter bike for alround useage, on initiall experience seems to qualify the Yammie for that purpose, and maybe keep the 125 Apes and Sachs for fun too.
Being a softee southerner I aint to bovvered there is no switch for the warmers, and was more than pleased that it felt just like the 900 Divvie to ride without all that weight to worry my Dickey tickre. Out on the road the clutch seemed fine albeit on full bore charging through the gears maybe a slight bit of slip was experienced, unless the back tyre was spinning of course, and I had no trouble with that or the reversed gears(except I forgot after a roundabout and the proverbial nuts were revving off it like mad), as the lever went up, but that equates to changing down- That was apparantly the main reason the seller wanted shot of it in favour of another Suzuki Burgman Maxi Scoot.
OK those have stators and a sort of DAF like constantly variable transmission. Hence no clutch to worry about. I used to be able to beat virtually anything away from the lights on my X9 based Aprilia Atlantic and on winding roads with the left brake lever to one of the four pot fronts, of the Brembo interlinked system pressure from the hydraulics would allow a certain feathering setting the machine into a corner and powering out. THat one actually got me back into bikes after 10 years not riding but even though I hankered for gears again , many such came and went without a single clutch issue between them, but over 8 years with the lazyman's scoot, never had a problem with belts bearings or the centrifugal clutch, as per my C70 and 90 Honda engines with semi auto "crunch"boxes that seem virtually bullet proof too.
So why is the XJ clutch not not a dry clutch-have I missed something in over 5 decades on and off, of pissinglaying about with cars and bikes.
However we are told we learn something new every day so I am genuinely interested to know the real ins and outs of that scenario?
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Post by mlbv on Dec 21, 2015 23:02:39 GMT
a dry clutch would mean the engine and gearbox being two completely separate sealed units, i think belt drive bikes have a dry clutch, with the power from the engine delivered to the gearbox externally, the wet clutch means the engine and gearbox can be more compact with the power being delivered from one to the other internally..
taking the power from the engine into the outside world and delivering it to a gearbox means a longer frame with the gearbox behind the engine instead of having the engine sat on top of it... of course having them one behind the other means the bike van be lower meaning they are better suited to 'men' of a certain age who get the urge to feel the wind in their vaginas once again...
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Post by bobh on Dec 21, 2015 23:29:55 GMT
CD may be along in a minute to say why the car-style engine speed dry clutch on the BMW boxers is the mutts's nuts. Which it may be until you have to pay a garage to change it.
I think it's just the way bikes have evolved. The "standard" layout, derived from pedal cycles, was always to have the crankshaft across the frame, with chains or belts (and later, some gears) driving a countershaft gearbox and thence the back wheel. I'm guessing that this arrangement makes an engine speed, single plate clutch impractically large to easily fit in, so the next available place to put it is on the gearbox input shaft, which runs at maybe 1/3 crank speed so needs to take 3x the torque. To manage that, within a reasonable overall diameter, it has to be multi-plate, a design that inevitably leads to clutch drag. On the other hand, it has advantages in terms of accessibility for maintenance, as well as being easy to modify for extra torque by adding stiffer springs and/or extra plates.
Early clutches used cork as the friction material, and to stop it burning out it needed to run in an oil bath. As far as I can think of, virtually all classic Brit bikes used a separate oil bath primary chaincase with the clutch in it, so it only shared its oil with the primary chain, not the engine or gearbox. At least that meant that different, and appropriate, oils could be used for the engine (almost always in a dry-sump arrangement) and the gearbox, rather than having to compromise on the one-oil-fits-all situation we have today. Even after cork was superseded by other friction materials this layout remained, and it's probably leaky chaincases that are the main source of the oil that drips from under old Brit bikes.
As a bit of an aside, I had a 1938 MG SA, with a 2.2-litre Wolseley-derived engine, that had a cork-lined engine-speed clutch. It was in the conventional place, sandwiched between the engine and gearbox, but was fed with oil from the engine through a jet in the crankshaft. I lived in Sheffield at the time, where clutches get a bit of a battering due to the many steep hills, and I soon learned not to hold the car on the clutch on hills as it would quickly fade out and slip for a while until it cooled down again.
Anyway, along came the Japanese, who rethought things along logical lines to take advantage of more modern manufacturing methods and materials. Apart from singles and off-roaders, they ditched the dry sump, with its leaky pipes and separate tank, in favour of a fully-enclosed wet sump design, and we've ended up with what we have today.
Of course, there are always exceptions to any rule, Ducati being one, and I think it's only very recently that they've switched from dry (multi-plate, gearbox-speed) clutches to wet ones, probably to meet noise regulations as much as anything else - the dry ones are virtually out in the open and sound like a pneumatic drill at close quarters when the bike's at a standstill. Aprilia, with the Mille and its derivatives, are another exception, as they chose to use a dry sump for that; whether it was to keep the engine as compact as possible, or to avoid surge under racing conditions I don't know.
Anyway, whatever the reasons for the way things have evolved the way they are, the fact is it works well, or at least well enough. Going back to BMW I think it's telling that although they have stuck with the dry engine-speed clutch for the shaft-drive boxers, when it comes to out-and-out performance they went for the universal Japanese layout (said to be based on the GSX-R1000 K5) for the S1000RR.
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Post by GAv on Dec 22, 2015 3:41:23 GMT
Well dare I say the earliest Motor Cycles had leather belts which one had to stop and remove a link from to traverse a hill, however I think it was Rudge that came up with a system that allowed a concentric pulley to be moved in and and out to allow the belt speed to the rear drivewheel to be altered and visa versa. However thereafter I am sure your explaination is valid. It is a weird sensation on my mountain bike when the electric kicks in, whilst peddling and those Shimano gears are so snappy, it is almost like having car paddles(a Jag is the only one I have driven with those), and directly after my procedure having been advised not to use it for a week or so, by the Consultant,in order to go see my Mum in a Care home, rode it there and back just using the electric and with the half throttle grip like a moped. After the stitch was removed, I went back to peddleing whatever the mode,going up and down the gears and the the motor kicking in is good fun too. It cuts out when you brake so that throttle is quite nippy for getting out of junctions and such .th however in heavy rain last week, after an appointment I was riding along the sea front, down a hill and as it goes back up hill the charge indicator lights went out and from going to trying to keep up pedalling with the motor speed, (I do that for the fitness factor)suddenly one found 21st gear as it should be very heavy going, particularly as the hub assisted by electricity seems to reverse the system, ie if you go from the smallest cog on the back wheel to the smallest front one, there is much less effort, unless the motor is turned off . Anyway having come to a halt before the hill incline really began , fiddled and tinkered with the thing till all lights reapeared and I was home again reasonably effortlessly. However my heart rate has gone from much too fast and erratic to within rythm and actually very low mainly due to one form of medication, or maybe the Pace Maker defibrilator needs tweaking. Perhaps my oil needs an additive! But it sure is nice to have the option of the cars and motorbikes again, especially as the weather can do anything at this time of year and the assisted push bike not required as a necessity. That said its much more preferable to walking for excercise!
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Post by kevinbrixhamdivvy on May 25, 2016 10:08:43 GMT
Miller's xss 10/40 motorcycle oil from opie oils on eBay. Just over £20 delivered. ?
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