[WildMike]

i have a 04 vee an as long as i have owned it i uses oil. it dosnt smoke or anything and there is no oil leaks. just curious if anyone else has this issue. i do run full synthetic an a guy i worked with said since synthetic is so slick that it might be getting past some seal or something.

 

[greywolf]

Both Stroms are often reported to use oil starting about 75mph. It's apparently lost through the breather. Are you doing that speed often?

 

[WildMike]

yeah i commute to work and do that speed about for about 30 min. each day.

 

[larry0071]

.......a guy i worked with said since synthetic is so slick that it might be getting past some seal or something.

(Larry the Cable Guy Voice) Now, that there is funny right there....... I don;t care who you are!!

That old wives tale has been perpetuated for decades. Total crap and conspiracy. Just nod your head and say OK... and walk away. Don't get dumber by listening to people with not a clue in the world!

On a more factual note, it has been suggested that some of the synthetics with more aggressive detergents can cause seal seaping on older higher mile engines that had worn/relaxed seals with buildup of deposites that kept enough tension on the seals to prevent leaking... after a change to synthetic and no ther changes it has been claimed that some older engines have shortly after developed leaks of some degree. The idea is that the better detergents may have removed some amount of the deposites alowing the seal to now be more loose on the part and some fluid was able to begin to pass.

Even that is something I have read and do not have any real factual data to back up. But oil being "more slippery" and "slipping past seals" is absurd.

More than likely your oil is being to some extent misted from high RPM use and siply being sucked out with the crank case breather.

I have a DL1K and am not seeing this with intermitant high RPM use, but maybe if I was like you did the high speed cruising regularly.... maybe then I would see the same?

 

[swingset]

I lose a bit on my '03, just chalked it up to the breather loss....it's not very bad. Annoying, but the bike runs perfect and doesn't leak anywhere.

 

[greywolf]

I'm old enough to remember synthetic oil leakage. I put Mobil 1 in my Honda CB500 once and it was mostly gone by the time I was coming home from my first long trip after that. IIRC, it had a 3 quart capacity and I put 2 quarts in before it got above the low mark on the dipstick. I had to replace the head gasket because it stopped sealing. The sticky stuff it came with washed away. Things are different today.

 

[tiller4me]

I'm old enough to remember synthetic oil leakage. I put Mobil 1 in my Honda CB500 once and it was mostly gone by the time I was coming home from my first long trip after that. IIRC, it had a 3 quart capacity and I put 2 quarts in before it got above the low mark on the dipstick. I had to replace the head gasket because it stopped sealing. The sticky stuff it came with washed away. Things are different today.

GW, do you remember the day when Kal-Gard offered a moly additive for your oil. Talk about seal seepage!!!!

 

[greywolf]

I never used oil additives. I remember the Kal-Gard name though, probably from commercials.

 

[BigMan73]

Just curious to learn - What is a breather? How does the oil escape?

 

[greywolf]

Pistons pressurize the crankcase on the down stroke and de-pressurize on the upstroke. The crankcase has to breathe to allow this or seals will blow. Crankcases used to be vented to the atmosphere but pollution concerns stopped that. Our bikes have a breather hose running from the base of each cylinder to the airbox where mesh filters grab most of the oil in the vapor and let it run back down the hoses but still allow air through. At about 75mph, the speed of the engine parts seems to get to the point where the oil particles in the mist are of sufficient quantity and fineness that more get past the mesh, through the air filter and into the air intakes than at lower speeds.

 

[BigMan73]

Pistons pressurize the crankcase on the down stroke and de-pressurize on the upstroke. The crankcase has to breathe to allow this or seals will blow. Crankcases used to be vented to the atmosphere but pollution concerns stopped that. Our bikes have a breather hose running from the base of each cylinder to the airbox where mesh filters grab most of the oil in the vapor and let it run back down the hoses but still allow air through. At about 75mph, the speed of the engine parts seems to get to the point where the oil particles in the mist are of sufficient quantity and fineness that more get past the mesh, through the air filter and into the air intakes than at lower speeds.

Thanks! That is one fantastic explanation :thumbup:
It is one of the more important things I learned on this site - never knew oil can 'disappear' like that.

I do ride a these speeds, not all the time, but will watch the oil more closely.

 

[danketchpel]

I found out that the breather is critical on these bikes. I accidentally didn't get the hose connect securely and it slipped off. After that the rear cylinder started to smoke badly and I found oil being pushed out the clutch pushrod seal. It really freaked me out. After much searching I found the dislodged hose and reconnected it, voila, no more smoking or oil leaking past the pushrod seal.

Consequently I have come to understand the crankcase pressure in the V configuration is very critical to control. I've never had this "problem" on any other configuration of engine, even big singles.

I suspect that it could benefit from a even higher vacuum level in the cases. A friend of mine who used to run AMA roadraces experimented with applying vacuum negative pressure to his crankcase to reduce oil windage and found it was worth nearly 1-1.5 hp at high rpm in some engines depending on configuration.

Here's some interesting reading where they claim it's worth 15hp in a high rpm racing V8 (aka nascar engines).

 

[Cake_Kat]

i have a 04 vee an as long as i have owned it i uses oil. it dosnt smoke or anything and there is no oil leaks. just curious if anyone else has this issue. i do run full synthetic an a guy i worked with said since synthetic is so slick that it might be getting past some seal or something.

Your bike is old enough that you might want to get a look at the plugs some time. Here's a guide for when you do, so, ya know, you can rule out the possibility that you're shooting the oil up into the combustion chamber.

 

[SittingDuck]

i have a 04 vee an as long as i have owned it i uses oil. it dosnt smoke or anything and there is no oil leaks. just curious if anyone else has this issue. i do run full synthetic an a guy i worked with said since synthetic is so slick that it might be getting past some seal or something.

Step 1: stop using synthetic
Step 2: (this should be done before step one) You should have followed your manual's break-in procedure.

That's why I build my own engines or buy my bikes new.
People don't know how to break in an engine and the oil rings don't seat properly. The manual is pretty clear on how to do the break-in properly, and the proper procedure is obvious to anyone that knows how an engine works (in the kind of detail that would interest an engineer, not in the layman's basic understanding of the four strokes), but people either "baby" it or abuse it, and that's very bad for seating the oil rings.

Motoman's method is stupid; power? what? Compression rings will seat just fine if you just idle the engine for 30 seconds; it's the oil rings that require a proper break-in (that, and many other parts like the camshaft). My bikes are rarely washed and may not look good, but all the mechanical bits work better than new.

Sorry, you, or the previous owner, ****ed up your bike. It's not big deal though; it just means you' re burning oil until you rehone the cylinders and install new rings (and follow it up with a proper break-in).

I'm 30 some thousand kilometres into my wee ownership (easily my 20th bike, many of which I have built myself), and my bike doesn't burn any oil. I get no blow-by either, and my oil stays clean for the first 3,000 kms after I change it.
My 1985 BMW with over 250,000 kms on the odometer (no engine work yet) behaves the same way.

But then again, I'm just a duck, and it's been established long ago that I don't know what I'm talking about. It's just a funny happenstance that the suzuki engineers agree with me.

Maybe we should have a sticky on how to break an engine in properly. I could write it if I knew how to write better.

 

[SCraig]

I would caution the original poster that in this thread, as in many on this forum, you will see the voice of reasoned experience and that of someone voicing their own opinion in a self-aggrandizing manner as if it were absolute fact. The choice of which to listen to is, of course, yours.

 

[Scott E. Bonds]

The break in may have zip to do with it. First off, how much oil?

My 2007 Vee was broken in properly with high quality dino oil over a 1000 mile interval. The bike was gradually worked up in RPM over the first 1000 miles and never run too hard either. I know this because it was my brothers and we discussed the break in when he bought it.

I have done the same with all my cars and bikes. All run synthetic. Some consume a little oil some don't.

My Vee uses exactly 1 quart between 5000 mile changes. It sits at 53,000 miles today, but that will change tonight. It has always used some oil since we started tracking it closely. My experience with bikes is 0.5 qt to 1.0 qt over 5000 miles is pretty good. Most warranties won't cover an engine unless it uses more than 1 qt per 1000 miles.

Mine gets wrung out routinely with full redline runs through third gear. I spend a fair amount of time at high speeds on the interstate also. It is hard to tell if how it is ridden makes any difference to oil usage, by my gut feeling is it does not.

BTW Harley fans....my late model twin cam uses the same amount, and it to, eats some through the breather.

As you can see, there is a lot of voodoo floating about synthetic oils and break in procedures. I doubt you will ever find anybody knowledgeable that will tell you synthetics are a bad idea....some will say you are wasting money. But what better way to waste it than on a bike.

 

[greywolf]

Synthetic oil can be used from the beginning. Some high end cars are sold new with it. The bike goes through a Dyno run before leaving the factory that makes the break in a strange procedure. The engine went well over 5000rpm with a load before in ever got to the showroom floor. That dyno run is a specific combination of engine loads and speeds to ready the engine for use as well as check its performance. The Duck's advice would have been spot on some years ago.

 

[BigMan73]

Synthetic oil can be used from the beginning. Some high end cars are sold new with it. The bike goes through a Dyno run before leaving the factory that makes the break in a strange procedure. The engine went well over 5000rpm with a load before in ever got to the showroom floor. That dyno run is a specific combination of engine loads and speeds to ready the engine for use as well as check its performance. The Duck's advice would have been spot on some years ago.

Makes a lot of sense, but why is that the oil that comes out after a few hundred miles is so full of small metal pieces? Why doesn't Suzuki clean up all the pieces before sending them to the client?

 

[Scott E. Bonds]

GW, I would arm wrestle you over using synthetic from the beginning. But we would both likely just get red in the face. To me, a factory dyno run is equivalent to only a short distance and there is still ring seating that will occur. It has been pounded into me to break in with dino oil for a thousand miles.

But, I may be stuck in the past also.

Question - does a Vstrom cylinder have a steel liner or is it an electroplated liner like nik-a-sil? Obvioulsy, a plated cylinder can not be honed and reused.

 

[greywolf]

Tear downs indicate the cylinder does have an iron liner but the literature says it is coated with a SCEM (Suzuki composite electrochemical material) which is similar to Nik-a-sil. The only piston available in Suzuki's parts list is a 0.5mm oversize so the liner can be bored.

As to break in, A new engine is fine with synthetic. A rebuilt engine does not have the benefit of the factory procedure, including the dyno run, and is best broken in with mineral oil. Stealth 316 - Engine Break-In