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oil consumption on 1150rs

  • Thread starter rfisher56@dslextreme.com
  • Start date
Bottom line:
Lots of highway - very low
City riding with lots of heat cycles - 2 to 3 times the oil use
Synthetic burns off less than Dino juice
Oil consumption tends to increase as the oil ages
Running from center of sight glass to bottom burns less than top to center.

Your results may vary.

Actually, my results are virtually identical.
 
Since we have another oil thread going anyway I've always wondered why Oilheads use oil in the first place. I know over filled oilheads will blow out the excess due to crank case pressure but if they are filled correctly, where does the oil go? Just curious...

Into the air box, that is why there is a drain plug at the rear left bottom. :bolt

But seriously, I have read that all boxers are designed to use some oil.
Because they are Air (and oil) cooled the expansion tolerances from cold to hot are much more than a water cooled engine. The very large piston size on our boxers allows oil to bypass the rings on cold startup.
In other words, don't turn it off if you want low oil consumption, they are meant to run hot.
 
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Some folks here may have similar stories.

I had a 4cyl rice burner/ truck that used 4 qts of oil in 3000 miles.

Ahh,, the good-ole-days...
 
Some folks here may have similar stories.

I had a 4cyl rice burner/ truck that used 4 qts of oil in 3000 miles.

Ahh,, the good-ole-days...

Me too! An 86 Mazda! Never did an oil change, just changed the filter every 3000!
 
As a point of reference to oil use on the Oilheads, it is true they tend to use some oil until the rings are fully fine tuned to match up well with the very hard coating in the cylinders. My 94 RS, at 170k uses very little oil, if any at all. I just saw the inside of the cylinders on an 1150R with over 225,000 miles on it. The engine was being opened up for the first time to replace the cam chain and guides, which requires a full block "split" to get at the components.

Both cylinders showed the original machined cross-hatching, no ridge at the top of the bore, and a very faint line about midway down the bore where it was evident the lowest ring on the pistons stopped. Both pistons showed no scuffing on the very short skirts. All the original rings still measured within spec for the proper end gap when set square in the bores.

So based on what I saw, it was clear the Oilheads take some miles to "seal up" oil use past the rings. But once there its good for many hundreds of thousands of miles.
 
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