Kissed on the arse by a golden fairy!

Ghezzi, we've talked about those selfies before.....

Are you running a stock exhaust with a cat?
It is surprising how well a modern emissions friendly exhaust can hide burning oil.
4 years ago we were testing classic 911’s at the Spa circuit. One of our crew decided to try a few laps in his Fiat Coupe. He was told to take it easy as they suffer from oil surging and then completely ignored this advice. After 4 laps he came back down the pit lane with the car sounding very rough he only decided to come in as the car felt down on power. Upon opening the bonnet we discovered there was no oil on the stick. When we poured fresh oil in it sounded like something had been dropped into a deep fryer as the oil sizzled on the hot internals. This motor had consumed over 3 litres of oil in 28 km with no telltale signs.
This engine didn’t have the same happy ending as your G14. It would run for 20 minuets but it was toast with a damaged head. Credit to Fiat engineering the bottom end didn’t sound bad but we didn’t bother with a full autopsy.

eeyore wrote:

Are you running a stock exhaust with a cat?

No.

Well the orange beastie is back up and running. New shells and oil and it seems to be tickety boo.

Don’t do it again!

Copy that.

Hopefully just an anomaly. Add some dye to the oil? Could possibly help if it starts to disappear again.

looks like some1 may got lucky … i did not on my T3 Looked like a grenade had exploded inside the sump It started to make "funny" noises when doing 160kmh on the highway, big rattle, light came on, hit the clutch, engine stalled … doing 160kmh .. not fun Bigend bearings were paper thin, crank worn in, rods worn in. Ended up rebuilding her with a V11 crank and rods and bearings. Perfect fit

She must have burned it somehow then. If there is no leakage and it is not in the gearbox or airfilter … pistonrings, valves seals maybe?

No dye required. It will be checked religiously.


Mrs Beetle: "WTF are you doing, it's 3AM!"
Me: "Checking my oil"

Aaagghhh!
It's the furquen little leprechaun with a siphon, caught on security camera leaving the scene.

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ghezzi wrote:

Aaagghhh!
It's the furquen little leprechaun with a siphon, caught on security camera leaving the scene.

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It does sound like some one has siphoned that oil out when the bike was un attended.............

I wonder? It was parked at the Budgie for 4 days.

No. Surely not.

beetle wrote:

I wonder?  It was parked at the Budgie for 4 days.

No. Surely not.

I really doubt it. Who would even know whose bike it was and if caught in the act at a rally I would think the outcome could be less than pleasant.

My suggestions for most likely cause are a period of too lean running while mapping possibly and also the fact that the rings may not of bedded properly yet.

Anyway, lets see what happens. Michael took it in to Queanbeyan and it was wet so he couldn't thrash it and it behaved well, (He's very envious of its low speed on/off throttle response. His bike is a bit of a pig in that regard.) and the oil level didn't budge. Not an acid test but at least we know that beyond the shells everything else seems good. Michael also found it a bit disconcerting how easy it is to get the front end light, even in the wet!

Pete

It pays to be cautious in 1st, 2nd & 3rd.

Maybe it was one of the angry hornets from the nest over at Wild Geezer. 

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I bet it will keep on drinking. My 1400 conversion did 4000 km until now and the beast doesn't think to drink fewer. Let me first try something before publishing it.

OK, so you’re saying yours is using oil too but you’ve only done 4000km? That’s an interesting reference point. Thank you.

Steak wrote:

beetle wrote:

I wonder?  It was parked at the Budgie for 4 days.

No. Surely not.

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Ahem - guilty as charged - there was a Budgie at the rally...

Pete, my engine runs remarkably hotter than before the conversion, to proof that I have now installed a RR dipstick thermometer which easily reaches 110 degrees oiltemperature at 30 degrees air temperature. Either I will try a 15W50 oil instead of 10W60 or install a bigger oil cooler. The oil simply is burned, that seems for sure. On my Italy trip oil consumption actually is about 1 l per 1000km.

If it runs hotter it needs better tuning, and you need 10w70, not a 50 weight oil.
Have they plugged up the oil cooling galleries?

Well I doubt that is the problem with Mark’s bike as whenever logging work is going on the engine temperature is recorded during the process and as it stands the oil temperature is staying so obstinately low that Mark’s pursuing the oil thermostat option again.

It has to be burning it, it’s not leaking and it’s not ending up in the airbox or drain tube. There’s only one other way it can disappear and that is past the rings. We’ll keep a much closer eye on it, as I will on my Stelvio motor, and see what transpires over a few more thousand km.

Pete

It may not be related but a friend purchased a new Stelvio, it had a bad seal on one valve which caused it to drink oil at around 1L per 100 km. The dealer had another head sent from the factory and it's been fine since.
The owner is a very good wrench, I can get him to give you the details if it would help.

Brand new seals. I doubt it’s that but if it persists i’ll Replace them.

They were brand new in my friends bike as well, no outward signs of excessive oil consumption.
Plugs were both clean.
Isn't there something unusual done with oil in these motors?

Not really anything unusual apart from the fact that the oil is also used as a dedicated coolant with its own circuit and pump.

All oil acts as a coolant, it has three purposes, to lubricate, (Keep stuff from touching other stuff.) to clean, (It washes crap out of places and allows it to be filtered or drained out.) and thirdly to cool.

Whenever oil is put under load the molecules rub together and heat up. This energy absorption produces resistance through friction, hence the heat and that heat has to be taken away from the bearing or it will overheat and melt. This is why bearing clearances in plain bearings are so critical. If the clearance is too large the oil cannot form a hydrodynamic wedge to keep the surface of the bearing and its journal apart, they rub together, a condition known as 'Boundary Lubrication' and the bearing melts and fails. If though the clearance is too small the amount of oil able to be pushed through it is insufficient to carry away the heat generated by its working, so the bearing melts and it fails!

As a 'Rule of Thumb' in automotive with a plain bearing you give one thou of clearance for every inch of journal diameter.

In the 8V motor the engine is lubricated by one pump and oil circuit with the feed going to the filter and OPRV and thence to the front and rear main bearings, the under piston sprays and thence up the studs to the cambox to lubricate the top end.

There is another dedicated circuit that delivers at lower pressure but higher volume that picks up and then delivers, without a thermostat, to the oil cooler and thence on to the back of the heads where, on the 1200's the oil goes through drillings around the exhaust valve seats to remove heat before draining back to the sump.

On the 1400's the feeds go to the inner faces of the cylinder castings and thence into a series of much larger galleries cast into the heads around bothe he exhaust valves, the spark plugs and the top of the combustion chamber. The heads are, in may ways, very similar to a water cooled engine head, its just that the dedicated coolant is oil rather than glycol and returns to the sump.

It is because of the under piston sprays and the cooling of the exhaust valve seats by oil that a full ester synthetic oil is so important. While the oil rushes through those galleries very quickly they do get hellishly hot! A normal mineral oil will degrade really quickly in these conditions. The word thing is though that generally the engines are grotesquely over-cooled! Trying to keep oil temperature up high enough to sublime off the watery by-products of combustion, in cooler weather, is a nightmare!

Pete