Acceptable Oil Loss / Usage

[Steve Block]

Hi,

My 97 Sprint (34K on the clock) is using about 200ml every 2000 miles. Is this norm for the age / mileage ?

Don't notice undue amounts of smoke when running, but did notice a little smoke behind me in the car headlamps following me when accelerating hard.

I guess given the age of the old girl, I should expect some loss, but I'm in a dilema whether to investigate or let sleeping dogs lie...

Any help / guidence appreciated.

Kind regards
Steve

[wdietz186]

Steve, That amount of oil consumption is no cause for concern. If the bikes use is in city/suburban conditions the constant engine speed changes will cause more oil consumption. I would wait until I couldn't see the car behind me before tearing into the engine. Some of the smoke you see in the lights is also fuel as they run a bit rich on accel.

[Steve Block]

Thanks for the advice.

I didn't think it was too much of an issue, and yes that does represent quite a bit of city stop / start riding.

One thing somebody told me once and not sure if it's folklore or not, but the suggestion was that using fully syn oil on an older engine is not such a good idea since there will be some element of wear on the engine and as the fully syn oil is better able to flow between the moving surfaces there's an increased chance of more oil burn off as a result. The suggestion was to run semi-syn on older engines (maybe without a full service history).

This theroy doesn't make a lot of sense to me, since I thought the idea was to get the oil flowing between the moving surfaces...

Do you have a view?

Cheers
Steve

[KitNYC]

Oy, not the old synth-in-old-engine myth again....

My 25-year-old Kawasaki 440 leaked a little around the head gasket. At this point, I'm pretty sure that had more to do with the bike sitting in a barn for 10 years than with my putting synthetic oil in it.

Synthetic oil is generally better quality, mostly because building your oil from component parts makes it much easier to control said quality. (Considering the other option is basically boiling some black goo you found in the ground...)

Personally, I run non-synth in my bike. Why? Because I use it almost exclusively in the city & beat the living **** out of my oil. Isn't that a better reason to use synth? Maybe, but I decided changing it every 2k instead of every 6k was an even betterer option.

Also, you are using 10% of the oil Triumph NA would consider problematic. General consensus amongst mechanics I've asked is that half a (quart/liter) per thousand miles is bad enough to tear into an engine, but I've been told by people who worked at dealerships & others that Triumph's official policy for warranty work is 1 milliliter per mile.

Cheers, HTH,
-Kit

[sailfish]

The oil consumption of my '98 Sprint w/ 50,000 miles is about half of what you're experiencing.

Along with consumption you may also be experiencing oil evaporation, expressed in a term called Noack Volatility. Here is an iteresting white paper on a variety of oils run through a battery of ASTM tests. It's reasonably objective considering the source. http://www.amsoil.com/products/stree...itePaper.aspx\

Synthetic oil is often unfairly blamed for leaks and consumption that would occur regardless. Also, your acceleration smoke could be from fuel as much as it is from oil.

[MotT3]

I get through some oil on the S3 I top up an unmeasured amount about every few tank fulls I suppose, I don't really keep track..!

A mate followed me recently and said he could...smell the bike but could not see any smoke, even when giving it smoke stick or on the shut off, it's giving V good power on the dyno so it's either fairly natural for the engine to be doing this or I have another theory...

I check the oil on the paddock stand when cold mostly, it could be that the paddock stand is lifting the bike a little higher than it should and oil is draining forward away from the dip stick, also it's cold so the oil is contacted....I then top up, go for blat.

What I thinking is, I could be slightly over filling each time due to my method of checking, the bike then burns off the over fill fairly quickly, I will test this out by checking the level with the rear of the bike lowered and bit and the oil warm...if the level stabilizes and I need to top up less often it could be my oil consumption is caused by just over filling all the time slightly and all I'm doing is loosing oil with no need ???

On the other hand I do the same with the Sprint & that doesn't need so much ? but it does have half the miles on it...ahhh well whatever it's not worrying me tooo much ;-)

[Steve Block]

Hi,

Thanks to all for the advice / guidence. Given what's been said, I'm not going to take an action right now, I'll just watch the consumption over the next couple of thousand miles or so. I primarily use the bike to commute (around 350 miles a week), which is 90% motorway and 10% slow city traffic. I must admit, I would have thought I'd use almost no oil given the constant speed (and I assume lower engine load) of motorway riding (as oppossed to say hard accleration from sport riding down country lanes etc).

I was supprised at the quote from one of the Triumph dealerships advising that 1 ml of oil loss per mile is acceptable. That would mean 4000 miles = 4 litres, a complete oil change...

Cheers
Steve

[zadok_oz]

When I rode across Australia recently (almost 4000km), my Tiger 955i used 1.5 Litres, which is half its capacity! Went ok though. Used the same on the return trip. Motul Semi 15-50

[roadrunsl]

My 95 Sprint has 115000km on odometer. Run with Motorex 10W40 before and now with Motul 5100 10W40 both semisynthetic. I change the oil on 8000 km. When putting new oil I insert all 4 liters of the tube. Oil level - just little bit more then the max level. After 8000 km the level is little lower then the max level. Oil consumption - aprox 300ml at 8000km.