Oil, oil and more oil

After 20 miles of hard acceleration and deceleration, here what my oil looked like:



Not sure how I'll ride or when I'll do the second oil change. Any suggestions?

mine looked the same at 147. my next one will be 300ish......then prob 1000. i am a former 2 smoker guy....torco oil ONLY IMO.

boogn1sh wrote:

After 20 miles of hard acceleration and deceleration

Looks pretty normal. Everything in that engine is breaking in, and using the same oil. I'd be surprised if it did not look like that. Mine looked like that too. I don't baby an engine during break-in but, I also don't ride it like I stole it. I think you should continue to cause some pressure in that cylinder like you have, without abusing of course. Rings need cylinder pressure to seat properly in the piston. At first I change the oil pretty frequently and then taper off to a more normal schedule. It's good to get all the break-in junk out of that engine. That's my thoughts.

I'll second that ↑

Mine looked pretty much the same as that at about 20km... (first change) lots of hard acceleration and deceleration.

Changed again at 200km(second) and then at 900km(third).

Definitely getting less metal filings each change.

Next at 2500km or 3000km.

:)

It does look exactly like I expected. At first I was thinking I'd do another 20 miles of the same then change again, but now I'm thinking that might be to extreme. Maybe I'll go 200 miles or so before the next oil change...

I did the first oil change after 600 miles and expect to change the oil for every 2000 miles from now on. Yamaha recommend oil change for every 3000 miles, but as I only use my R² for off road riding, I change a bit more often. Yamaha Scandinavia gives a 5 years waranty (for free) with free mileage on the R², so I believe the engine will work just fine without frequent oil change.

If I wanted to change oil all the time, I would have got me a WRF or a KTM.


T

Don T wrote:

I did the first oil change after 600 miles and expect to change the oil for every 2000 miles from now on. Yamaha recommend oil change for every 3000 miles, but as I only use my R² for off road riding, I change a bit more often. Yamaha Scandinavia gives a 5 years waranty (for free) with free mileage on the R², so I believe the engine will work just fine without frequent oil change.

If I wanted to change oil all the time, I would have got me a WRF or a KTM.


T

True, however this is break-in time. lots of crap floating around in there. I just don't feel comfortable with that.
I've done the same on the 5 other new bikes I've bought. The first oil change all looked the same, lots of filings for the first 1000kms or so.

cheap insurance and peace of mind

And hey, if the engines are that good! excellent. But they haven't been around for 10 years yet, people just don't know how good they are.

On racing engines we would change the oil only after a rebuild at about 5 to 10 laps (15 to 30 miles). then in the pit make a what we call a HOT oil flush and filter change. When the bike comes in after the 5 to 10 laps, we drained the oil, then filled it again with oil that was heated on a hot plate. Restarted the engine, made sure it was up to temp, then reved it up 10 to 20 times, killed the ignition, changed the oil and filter.

The first oil looked like the picture at the top of this thread. The second oil change flushed out any remaining debris. The oil was changes after each session and oil and filter after each race. These motors cost about $45K to $65K so oil from each race was sent out for analysis.

engines that share clutch, transmission and internal chains show a LOT of pearl in the oil. It is important to make sure the filter is capable of screening this debris.

Great stuff - I plan on using the "motoman" break-in method as well. Just picked up 3 filters today (got a great price in bulk at the dealer!); will likely do 20, 100, then 600, 2K, 4K miles, etc...

When is a good interval to switch to synthetic?

BPG wrote:

...will likely do 20, 100, then 600, 2K, 4K miles, etc...

When is a good interval to switch to synthetic?

Your mileage plan looks good and safe to me. Not sure about synth oil. I just use regular Castrol or Yamalube. Too cheap to buy the synth, plus I never seem to keep a bike long enough to get to the synth mileage (4-5K?). Hopefully R² will be different.....

Yeah, guess I keep my stuff for a while! My road bike "only" has 65K miles on it; might check compression when she's twice that...



Great forum BTW, hope it takes off (and it seems to be!)

hey, my first post on this forum. the manual says not to use high quality oil. i think that means synthetic. i switched to Delo diesel oil around 450 miles. runs great and shifts well. sometimes neutral is hard to find when going real slow, but easy when stopped. not sure if this is the oil or not. the yamalube was great, but i want to try an auto clutch when they come out and they recommend diesel oil for them. i figured i might as well change over now. its cheap too. i've tried Rotella T in other bikes and they shift like crap.

Be careful with oil not for bikes. They don't have the additive in it for the clutchpack; even if you are going to go auto like the Recluse, it still will use the same oil. I've found that using 15/40 in other bikes I've owned have affected the shifting in such a way that it seemed stiff, or wouldn't shift right. It's up to you, but the automotive oils out there don't have the additives in it required for bikes.
I did my first change at 1000km. My oil color was a dark honey color, and didn't have any of that pearly swirl. I did find microfine filings in the filter, but not an awful lot. Next change will; be at 3000. I've kept to the same change schedule with all my bikes and have got many years of good use out of them with that schedule.

Depending on how you ride, 1000km (621.3 miles) is a good time for your first oil/filter change. If you are doing something fairly extreme, like the Motoman break-in, or just riding it like you stole it, changing your oil at 20 miles is much safer. That is the reason I started this thread with a photo, to show people how quickly your oil will get contaminated when running a brand new engine very hard. If you are doing something less extreme and closer to what the book says, waiting a few hundred miles should be OK.

SheWolf wrote:

Be careful with oil not for bikes. They don't have the additive in it for the clutchpack;
...the automotive oils out there don't have the additives in it required for bikes.

Not entirely the case. The main problem is automobile oils have too many additives. "Friction Modifiers" in particular. They are too slippery. Good for the engine. Bad for the clutch. Any oil, synthetic or not, that has the "Energy Conserving" in the bottom half of the specifications ring on the bottle could cause clutches to slip. Synthetics without that designator are few and far between, but some don't have it and are generally safe with motorcycle wet clutches. I've used Mobil 1 15w-50 in bikes with no clutch slippage. Only in warm summer heat though. It used to be known as Mobil 1 "red cap", but they have since redesigned the bottles and now its just a grey cap like the bottle itself.

Basically, if the label has "Energy Conserving", like this , it's more likely to cause a wet clutch to slip. (Anything is fine with dry clutches).

Well, there are endless discussions about this all.
First I want to say, a professional guy at KTM maintaining dozens of bikes for rent that were at real hard offroad usage all the time told me to use cheap turbo diesel oil but change at regular intervals. This would be best for that kind of usage. He should know, since for every damage at those bikes he had to fix it himself.

With my LC4 KTMs I used expensive synthetic oil mostly of manufacturers choice, but experienced clutch slipping after warm starts.

With my Yamaha Tricker I switched to full synthetic oil after a while, offending Yamahas advice to stick with normal oil, but there were no problems at all. However, I had a reason for doing so. I planned some enduro trip with max engine load at long and steep climbs (first gear, full throttle over long time) and I was not sure about durability of such a small and weak air cooled engine. The engine got really hot, but it proved durable, which might be a consequence of using VS oil.

I will not stick to motomans engine break in with my WR250R but will stick to the way we used to break in our KTM endurobikes. Go quite soft for about 200km (but do lots of load and gear change), then change oil and increase load with some sort of saw profile. No continous load. Offroad usage is perfect. Slowly increase max rev rate and start to use full rev bandwith more and more, but not for long. Up to km800. Change oil. Go into normal operation mode which should not be so much different from final break in phase.
This method as to my knowledge will be supported by some engine expert over here who wrote an article about this previously after lots of tests, which should be published soon. At least, I am waiting for this publication announced by some magazine.
Regards, Phil

Thanks Phil. It's refreshing to see a good and different perspective on oils used. I guess being old school I have the tendency to want to use the stuff my DT ran on, which was the Delo 400 15/40. I'd run it in my R²...guess I should take a look for that label and see. We run it in the logging truck and it's a great oil; plus I can get it in the 5 gallon bucket a lot cheaper than buying Yamalube at $8 a bloody bottle.

So I noticed in the owner's manual:

- from 10-70 degrees F, use 10W30 oil. Easy enough.

- from 50-110 degrees F, use 20W40 oil. Not so easy to find...

I'm sure Yamaha sells it (for a nice premium), but I was in Advance Auto, WalMart and Auto Zone today and noticed that this weight of oil is basically not available - or maybe they were all out of it at the same time!

My plan is to use a decent 10W30 for break-in (motoman method w/ oil & filter changes @ 20, 100 & 600 miles). At 1500, I was going to switch to a synthetic. What weight synthetic would work well in warmer weather (I'm thinking of just saying screw it and using Mobil-1 15W50)?

Additional thoughts?

I've been running rotella t 15w 40 in my X for 4,000 miles now. I change it every 1,000 miles and oil filter every other time.

just use 10W-40 non-synthetic. every bike shop sells it. i'm using 15W-40 Delo now. i'm gonna try the Yamalube again and see if i notice any change.

Keep us posted Bob. I can get my hands on that by the bucket cause it's used in the logging truck.

i just put the Yamalube back in, but haven't riden it yet. i ran the Delo from 450 miles to 950 miles. i had no problems with it. i'll see if the Yamalube lets me find neutral any easier (going real slow). besides that, the Delo was great as it could just be me and not the oil.
the Rotella T is real popular in the KTM world so i doubt Delo will hurt a Yamaha.

Check MO-Web for their new article, written by Helmut Heusler, a well known engines expert. Thanks to MO mag for publishing this immediatly!

Heusler also comments about motomans break in method, BTW. This article is in German language. Maybe Google translate helps. May I give a short summary, though. Heusler does not contradict to motomans method, but gives some very reasonable critics and suggestions.
All in all, take it easy until first oil change, then increase load up to maximum. There is no reason to do so within the first 30 miles. This can be done better a bit later, and should probably be done after first oil change, which is crucial since there are some really hard components from engine manufacturing in the first oil.

Basically, engine break in is no longer a big deal and does not need such an amount of caution as it used to formerly. Initial engine oil washes out lots of dirt (he gives many details about it) and engine needs to be run with some care before oil change.
However, running new engines with cheap oil is an urban legend. Forget about it. Using high quality oil will never hurt, but he does not say there is a need for it. Depends on usage, engine and whatever.
However, no matter how engine break in is handled, there won't be much harm done to the engine, with current engines of japanese mass production.
There is no need to stick to manufacturers restrictions about running extremely slow for 1000 miles or so. This would not be such a good idea at all, as long as initial oil is changed early.

There is lots of technical discussion, many pictures and details given. Also he comments about motomans method. Unlike Motoman, Heusler does not suggest to ride it hard right from the very beginning. However, he agrees it is an important part of engine break in to ride it hard at some stage. He even suggests doing so at motorways (unlimited in Germany) over quite some distance to keep engine temperature high to obtain good results.
Also he states, there are break in results that can be measured up to 15000km or so, which means, there are lots of engine parts that need to be broken in, and it is working quite different for them.

Hope this is interesting to someone. To me it sounds very reasonable and I will keep doing so with the WRR.

Thanks Flatboarder!

This information is great.

I always wonder why manufacturers insist on leaving the original oil in for 1000kms! when it's full of these very hard metals...

"True bad but are remnants of Gießsand - chemically silicon
carbide - which, despite lavish washing procedures do not completely
rule out the complex cylinder heads and special water-cooled engines
are flush out. While
the broad elements of all these residues from the oil filter held back,
the fine particles with a size of below four microns but wander
blithely through the filter paper and constantly perform their abrasive
plant in the engine."

You can get Spectro 4 in 20w40