rob johnson
Member
Nice reply skyliner, point taken
Tips I've learned from many builds-great newbie read.
- Thread starter Skyliner70cc
- Start date
- Status
shell shock
Member
Richard Rose
New Member
Ive also done away with the master link,several have failed and gotten chewed-up.Much simpler to break the chain.
Skyliner70cc
Active Member
- Local time
- 12:51 AM
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2007
- Messages
- 1,338
SS,
Please explain what filling in the corners does? The only time I've seen teh chain lock up on itself in that area is when the engine is mounted too high on the frame causing a steep chain angle to the rear sprocket. With all of my builds to date over the past 7 years or so, I've never had an issue with this. A nicely lubed chain is also important. Some 415 chains out of the box are very stiff.
shell shock
Member
i was on a ride while breaking in the bike, the chain went slack and it formed a bend in the clutch arm case, ill draw another diagram. there was a thread or two about this. here is a link. look at post 4 and onward. its more common then you think
http://www.motoredbikes.com/showthread.php?t=30198&highlight=chain+lock
http://www.motoredbikes.com/showthread.php?t=30198&highlight=chain+lock
axel
New Member
synthetic oil
good reading. but i am interested in the comment about your fuel blend being superior to amsoil or any synthetic. I use amsoil saber 100:1 2 stroke oil and amsoil quikshot ( to help stabalize crapy gas). It is not recomended to mix any other additives in it. I put it in my grubee GT5 at recomended mix ratio from the begining. runs good and burns clean. the castor oil idea sounds like a 1930s deal to me. I am not saying that to be offensive, I just wonder what bad experience you had with amsoil that makes you say these things. If you always mixed in these other things with amsoil instead of as recommended you probably did have a bad result. thanks.
good reading. but i am interested in the comment about your fuel blend being superior to amsoil or any synthetic. I use amsoil saber 100:1 2 stroke oil and amsoil quikshot ( to help stabalize crapy gas). It is not recomended to mix any other additives in it. I put it in my grubee GT5 at recomended mix ratio from the begining. runs good and burns clean. the castor oil idea sounds like a 1930s deal to me. I am not saying that to be offensive, I just wonder what bad experience you had with amsoil that makes you say these things. If you always mixed in these other things with amsoil instead of as recommended you probably did have a bad result. thanks.
Skyliner70cc
Active Member
- Local time
- 12:51 AM
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2007
- Messages
- 1,338
I base my support of castor oil on fact and experience of 30 years flying 2 stroke model airplane engines confirmed it provides superior lubrication and overtemp protection.
I've posted numerous times about castor oil in various threads regarding its superiority. I don't want to rehash it again. The only advantage synthetic may have over castor is it burns cleaner but nothing beats a castor blend in a 2 stroke engine.
I've posted numerous times about castor oil in various threads regarding its superiority. I don't want to rehash it again. The only advantage synthetic may have over castor is it burns cleaner but nothing beats a castor blend in a 2 stroke engine.
axel
New Member
syhthetic oil
skyliner, thanks for the reply. I really enjoy your posts that I have read so far. I have only been on this site a few days, so havent seen all your previous articles. since switching from petro based oils to amsoil in my chainsaw weedeaters, ect. i have seen great improvement in performance. no more clouds of smoke, wet exhaust pipes, and improved cold startup. 3.5 oz. bottle makes 2 1/2 gal. of fuel. at about $2.30 a bottle i dont think it is very expensive, plus the same mix works excellent in all the applications. no need to have a bunch of cans around with different mixes in them. so far, never had a failure. i expect to have same result with my china gas motor. so far, its a pretty good runner. you made it clear that you do not want to rehash this fuel topic any more and i respect that. i believe you are very sincere and honest about your findings, and are only trying to help others, i respect that also. However, i am more interested in actual fact than personal opinion. you say castor oil is better than amsoil but offer no scientific evidence of that claim, unless you did in earlier post that i havent seen. so i want to mix up a batch of your brew and see what happens. start with heat gun to check temps, then top speed comparisons, fuel mileage, ect. will do this as fairly as i possably can multiple times and see what shakes out. it will take awhile. going to wait for warmer weather, still cold most days here in iowa. this is for my own benifit, not just to dispute you. if your deal works better than what i m doing, i want to use it to. will post results as soon as i can. no need to respond to this because i know your tired of it. thank again, axel. UPDATE: after along research session since very early this morning i decided it not necessary to conduct comparison test between castor oil and amsoil, or anything else. Reason being that it comes back to me now the horror stories told me by my go cart racin buddies about mixing castor oil fuel in their westbends,macs, powerproducts, ect. engines. Aso this story I found on bridgestonemotorcycle.com by Gordon Jennings way back in Feb. 1978. Remember this was 1978, lubrication products have improved by leaps and bounds since then, but castor bean oil is still castor bean oil. Here are a few lines from that article: most ( but not all )petroleum and synthetic based, additive packaged, lubricants do NOT have castor oils DANGEROUSLY short shelf life. Mix castor with gasoline and/or leave it exposed to air, and its lubricating qualities quickly degrade. You can use todays batch of castor/gas premix for tomarrows race, but its no good for next weekend. Old castor premix will coat spark plugs with black,tar like deposits, and its lubricating quality isnt worth ZILCH! the real reason for the artical was to test mix ratio results, to bebunk a theory at the time that less castor oil was better than more. Anyway one of the last lines in the story reads: For the reasons just given, we were obliged to do our testing using castor oil, which we admit is horrible stuff in every way You guys do what you want, but i will stick with my AMSOIL. THANKS axel
skyliner, thanks for the reply. I really enjoy your posts that I have read so far. I have only been on this site a few days, so havent seen all your previous articles. since switching from petro based oils to amsoil in my chainsaw weedeaters, ect. i have seen great improvement in performance. no more clouds of smoke, wet exhaust pipes, and improved cold startup. 3.5 oz. bottle makes 2 1/2 gal. of fuel. at about $2.30 a bottle i dont think it is very expensive, plus the same mix works excellent in all the applications. no need to have a bunch of cans around with different mixes in them. so far, never had a failure. i expect to have same result with my china gas motor. so far, its a pretty good runner. you made it clear that you do not want to rehash this fuel topic any more and i respect that. i believe you are very sincere and honest about your findings, and are only trying to help others, i respect that also. However, i am more interested in actual fact than personal opinion. you say castor oil is better than amsoil but offer no scientific evidence of that claim, unless you did in earlier post that i havent seen. so i want to mix up a batch of your brew and see what happens. start with heat gun to check temps, then top speed comparisons, fuel mileage, ect. will do this as fairly as i possably can multiple times and see what shakes out. it will take awhile. going to wait for warmer weather, still cold most days here in iowa. this is for my own benifit, not just to dispute you. if your deal works better than what i m doing, i want to use it to. will post results as soon as i can. no need to respond to this because i know your tired of it. thank again, axel. UPDATE: after along research session since very early this morning i decided it not necessary to conduct comparison test between castor oil and amsoil, or anything else. Reason being that it comes back to me now the horror stories told me by my go cart racin buddies about mixing castor oil fuel in their westbends,macs, powerproducts, ect. engines. Aso this story I found on bridgestonemotorcycle.com by Gordon Jennings way back in Feb. 1978. Remember this was 1978, lubrication products have improved by leaps and bounds since then, but castor bean oil is still castor bean oil. Here are a few lines from that article: most ( but not all )petroleum and synthetic based, additive packaged, lubricants do NOT have castor oils DANGEROUSLY short shelf life. Mix castor with gasoline and/or leave it exposed to air, and its lubricating qualities quickly degrade. You can use todays batch of castor/gas premix for tomarrows race, but its no good for next weekend. Old castor premix will coat spark plugs with black,tar like deposits, and its lubricating quality isnt worth ZILCH! the real reason for the artical was to test mix ratio results, to bebunk a theory at the time that less castor oil was better than more. Anyway one of the last lines in the story reads: For the reasons just given, we were obliged to do our testing using castor oil, which we admit is horrible stuff in every way You guys do what you want, but i will stick with my AMSOIL. THANKS axel
Last edited:
Skyliner70cc
Active Member
- Local time
- 12:51 AM
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2007
- Messages
- 1,338
You quote a 1978 article as proof that you demand from me? Please, do not pollute this thread with an oil war.
In extreme high temperature settings, castor is superior to any synethic or conventional oil. An air cooled engine at high power and load setting and low engine speed (climbing mountains in Colorado) exceeds temperatures at which synthetic can lubricate the engine (it burns off) leaving nothing to do its job. If you just putz around your neighborhood with your HT 2 stroke engine than any conventional or synthetic is fine. But if you run your engine hard and hot, the only way to prevent an engine seizure is using an oil that can tolerate the higher temperatures much better.
Axel, come up to where I live and let's go for an 8 hour ride. 4-5 of those hours will be going up steep hills at full throttle and less than 10mph. After 40 minutes or so, your head will discolor to an ashen grey color and your silver exhaust will be cherry red hot. If you are running synthetic, your engine will have seized before you ever reached this engine temperature but if you are running castor, it'll still run all day long.
CASTOR OIL
By Bert Striegler.
Back in 1983 there was quite a controversy in magazines about the tests that were necessary to measure the "lubricity" of various oils that might be useful in engines. Castor oil was used as the benchmark, but it was obvious no one knew why this was so. They apparently got a lot of info on various industry tests of lubricants, but these were really designed for other purposes. This was my answer. I will remind you that I was a lubrication engineer and not a chemist, but I drew my chemical info from Bob Durr, the most experienced lubricant scientist in the labs at Conoco.
Bob worked with my group on many product development projects and I can tell you that he is one smart hombre! Small changes were made in the text, but surprisingly very little has really changed since this was originally written. Here goes with the answer:
"I thought I would answer your plea for more information on castor oil and its "film strength", which can be a very misleading term. I have never really seen a satisfactory way to measure the film strength of an oil like castor oil. We routinely use tests like the Falex test, the Timken test or the Shell 4-ball test, but these are primarily designed to measure the effect of chemical extreme pressure agents such as are used in gear oils. These "EP" agents have no function in an IC engine, particularly the two-stroke model engine types.
You really have to go back to the basics of lubrication to get a better handle on what happens in a engine. For any fluid to act as a lubricant, it must first be "polar" enough to wet the moving surfaces. Next, it must have a high resistance to surface boiling and vaporization at the temperatures encountered. Ideally the fluid should have "oiliness", which is difficult to measure but generally requires a rather large molecular structure. Even water can be a good lubricant under the right conditions.
Castor oil meets these rather simple requirements in an engine, with only one really severe drawback in that it is thermally unstable. This unusual instability is the thing that lets castor oil lubricate at temperatures well beyond those at which most synthetics will work.
Castor oil is roughly 87% triglyceride of ricinoleic acid, [ (CH3(CH2)5CH(OH)CH2CH=CH(CH2)7COO)3(OC)3H5 ], which is unique because there is a double bond in the 9th position and a hydroxyl in the 11th position. As the temperature goes up, it loses one molecule of water and becomes a "drying" oil. Another look at the molecule. Castor oil has excellent storage stability at room temperatures, but it polymerizes rapidly as the temperature goes up. As it polymerizes, it forms ever-heavier "oils" that are rich in esters. These esters do not even begin to decompose until the temperature hits about 650 degrees F (343 deg C). Castor oil forms huge molecular structures at these elevated temperatures - in other words, as the temperature goes up, the castor oil exposed to these temperatures responds by becoming an even better lubricant!
Unfortunately, the end byproduct of this process is what we refer to as "varnish." So, you can't have everything, but you can come close by running a mixture of castor oil with polyalkylene glycol like Union Carbide's UCON, or their MA 731. This mixture has some synergistic properties, or better properties than either product had alone. As an interesting sidelight, castor oil can be stabilized to a degree by the addition of Vitamin E (Tocopherol) in small quantities, but if you make it too stable it would no longer offer the unusual high temperature protection that it did before.
Castor oil is not normally soluble in ordinary petroleum oils, but if you polymerize it for several hours at 300 degrees F (149 deg C), the polymerized oil becomes soluble. Hydrogenation achieves somewhat the same effect.
Castor oil has other unique properties. It is highly polar and has a great affinity for metal surfaces.
It has a flash point of only 445 degrees F (229 deg C), but its fire point is about 840 degrees F (449 deg C)! This is very unusual behavior if you consider that polyalkylene glycols flash at about 350-400 degrees F (176-204 deg C)and have a fire point of only about 550 degrees F (288 deg C), or slightly higher.
Nearly all of the common synthetics that we use burn in the combustion chamber if you get off too lean or hot.
Castor oil does not, because it is busily forming more and more complex polymers as the temperature goes up. Most synthetics boil on the cylinder walls at temperatures slightly above their flash point. The same activity can take place in the wrist pin area, depending on engine design.
Synthetics also have another interesting feature - they would like to return to the materials from which they were made, usually things like ethylene oxide, complex alcohols, or other less suitable lubricants. This happens very rapidly when a critical temperature is reached. We call this phenomena "unzippering" for obvious reasons.
So, you have a choice. Run the engine too lean and it gets too hot. The synthetic burns or simply vaporizes, but castor oil decomposes into a soft varnish and a series of ester groups that still have powerful lubricity.
Good reason for a mix of the two lubricants! ( " Maxima 927 " is a mix as described here!)
In spite of all this, the synthetics are still excellent lubricants if you know their limitations and work within those limits. Used properly, engine life will be good with either product. Cooked on a lean or hot run, castor oil will win every time. A mix of the two can give the best of both worlds.
Like most things in this old life, lubricants are always a compromise of good and bad properties. Synthetics yield a clean engine, while castor oil yields a dirty engine, but at least now you know why! "
Bert Striegler
In extreme high temperature settings, castor is superior to any synethic or conventional oil. An air cooled engine at high power and load setting and low engine speed (climbing mountains in Colorado) exceeds temperatures at which synthetic can lubricate the engine (it burns off) leaving nothing to do its job. If you just putz around your neighborhood with your HT 2 stroke engine than any conventional or synthetic is fine. But if you run your engine hard and hot, the only way to prevent an engine seizure is using an oil that can tolerate the higher temperatures much better.
Axel, come up to where I live and let's go for an 8 hour ride. 4-5 of those hours will be going up steep hills at full throttle and less than 10mph. After 40 minutes or so, your head will discolor to an ashen grey color and your silver exhaust will be cherry red hot. If you are running synthetic, your engine will have seized before you ever reached this engine temperature but if you are running castor, it'll still run all day long.
CASTOR OIL
By Bert Striegler.
Back in 1983 there was quite a controversy in magazines about the tests that were necessary to measure the "lubricity" of various oils that might be useful in engines. Castor oil was used as the benchmark, but it was obvious no one knew why this was so. They apparently got a lot of info on various industry tests of lubricants, but these were really designed for other purposes. This was my answer. I will remind you that I was a lubrication engineer and not a chemist, but I drew my chemical info from Bob Durr, the most experienced lubricant scientist in the labs at Conoco.
Bob worked with my group on many product development projects and I can tell you that he is one smart hombre! Small changes were made in the text, but surprisingly very little has really changed since this was originally written. Here goes with the answer:
"I thought I would answer your plea for more information on castor oil and its "film strength", which can be a very misleading term. I have never really seen a satisfactory way to measure the film strength of an oil like castor oil. We routinely use tests like the Falex test, the Timken test or the Shell 4-ball test, but these are primarily designed to measure the effect of chemical extreme pressure agents such as are used in gear oils. These "EP" agents have no function in an IC engine, particularly the two-stroke model engine types.
You really have to go back to the basics of lubrication to get a better handle on what happens in a engine. For any fluid to act as a lubricant, it must first be "polar" enough to wet the moving surfaces. Next, it must have a high resistance to surface boiling and vaporization at the temperatures encountered. Ideally the fluid should have "oiliness", which is difficult to measure but generally requires a rather large molecular structure. Even water can be a good lubricant under the right conditions.
Castor oil meets these rather simple requirements in an engine, with only one really severe drawback in that it is thermally unstable. This unusual instability is the thing that lets castor oil lubricate at temperatures well beyond those at which most synthetics will work.
Castor oil is roughly 87% triglyceride of ricinoleic acid, [ (CH3(CH2)5CH(OH)CH2CH=CH(CH2)7COO)3(OC)3H5 ], which is unique because there is a double bond in the 9th position and a hydroxyl in the 11th position. As the temperature goes up, it loses one molecule of water and becomes a "drying" oil. Another look at the molecule. Castor oil has excellent storage stability at room temperatures, but it polymerizes rapidly as the temperature goes up. As it polymerizes, it forms ever-heavier "oils" that are rich in esters. These esters do not even begin to decompose until the temperature hits about 650 degrees F (343 deg C). Castor oil forms huge molecular structures at these elevated temperatures - in other words, as the temperature goes up, the castor oil exposed to these temperatures responds by becoming an even better lubricant!
Unfortunately, the end byproduct of this process is what we refer to as "varnish." So, you can't have everything, but you can come close by running a mixture of castor oil with polyalkylene glycol like Union Carbide's UCON, or their MA 731. This mixture has some synergistic properties, or better properties than either product had alone. As an interesting sidelight, castor oil can be stabilized to a degree by the addition of Vitamin E (Tocopherol) in small quantities, but if you make it too stable it would no longer offer the unusual high temperature protection that it did before.
Castor oil is not normally soluble in ordinary petroleum oils, but if you polymerize it for several hours at 300 degrees F (149 deg C), the polymerized oil becomes soluble. Hydrogenation achieves somewhat the same effect.
Castor oil has other unique properties. It is highly polar and has a great affinity for metal surfaces.
It has a flash point of only 445 degrees F (229 deg C), but its fire point is about 840 degrees F (449 deg C)! This is very unusual behavior if you consider that polyalkylene glycols flash at about 350-400 degrees F (176-204 deg C)and have a fire point of only about 550 degrees F (288 deg C), or slightly higher.
Nearly all of the common synthetics that we use burn in the combustion chamber if you get off too lean or hot.
Castor oil does not, because it is busily forming more and more complex polymers as the temperature goes up. Most synthetics boil on the cylinder walls at temperatures slightly above their flash point. The same activity can take place in the wrist pin area, depending on engine design.
Synthetics also have another interesting feature - they would like to return to the materials from which they were made, usually things like ethylene oxide, complex alcohols, or other less suitable lubricants. This happens very rapidly when a critical temperature is reached. We call this phenomena "unzippering" for obvious reasons.
So, you have a choice. Run the engine too lean and it gets too hot. The synthetic burns or simply vaporizes, but castor oil decomposes into a soft varnish and a series of ester groups that still have powerful lubricity.
Good reason for a mix of the two lubricants! ( " Maxima 927 " is a mix as described here!)
In spite of all this, the synthetics are still excellent lubricants if you know their limitations and work within those limits. Used properly, engine life will be good with either product. Cooked on a lean or hot run, castor oil will win every time. A mix of the two can give the best of both worlds.
Like most things in this old life, lubricants are always a compromise of good and bad properties. Synthetics yield a clean engine, while castor oil yields a dirty engine, but at least now you know why! "
Bert Striegler
Skyliner70cc
Active Member
- Local time
- 12:51 AM
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2007
- Messages
- 1,338
The statement that castor mixed with gas goes bad quick is a fallacy. If by quick you mean 2 weeks, then you are correct. 2 weeks is the max time you should store a premix made with castor. Since I mix one gallon at a time (using an empty windshield washer fluid gallon bottle), this isn't a problem. Although I currently use 100% castor oil, the average person would be best served with a blended oil containing synthetic oil mixed with castor oil (the ideal mix depends on your riding style and how hard your run the engine).
Oil: Castor vrs Synthetic from http://www.kartweb.com/TechArt/Fuel/Oil.htm
After using various synthetics with excellent results, we decided to begin test Castor Oil. Typically with Synthetic, we ran 20:1 for break-in, and 28:1 for racing. Our motors have lived long lives with at these ratios.
Castor oil seems to need a little lower ratio, 18:1 for break-in, and 24:1 for racing, according to many of the Europeans who have far more experience with Castor Oil then we did.
For those who read their piston/exhaust outlet/spark plug, should note the differences in the decomposition of Castor vrs Synthetics as outlined in Castor Oil 101. Synthetic simply burns away, where the decomposition fractions of Castor Oil tend to leave a brownish stain of varnish.
The proper color for mixture with Castor is more of a caramel-brown or tan then the "yellowed smokers tooth" color we see on the upper porcelain of the spark plug insulator. The piston dome should also have a dry tan appearance. Note the operative word "dry". Any sheen that could indicate liquid like oil is too rich. Inside the dome is the best place to look for any dampness. After pulling the head several times to inspect the color, we decided to use a bent Q-Tip to swab the roof of the combustion chamber for oil.
Castor oil will leave a little more ash everywhere, including the exhaust tip. The exhaust tip will also have a tan color effect but not as pronounced - it can still be a gray color.
Exhaust Gas Temps (EGT) will not change between Synthetic and Castor. EGT is not a reliable way to find peak power especially in water cooled motors. EGT is pretty reliable in warning of damaging temps like a stick if you have a reliable system. As Castor oil does not tend to burn like synthetic does it consumes little or no oxygen. Going from 28:1 to 24:1 also means less gasoline is being introduced. You may need to jet slightly richer with Castor then Synthetic.
There is no discernable power difference from Castor to Synthetic. The main advantage to Castor Oil over Synthetic is it remains a better lubricant as it has decomposed. Castor Oil won't make much difference on bottom end life, but it will extend the life to the top end.
Oil: Castor vrs Synthetic from http://www.kartweb.com/TechArt/Fuel/Oil.htm
After using various synthetics with excellent results, we decided to begin test Castor Oil. Typically with Synthetic, we ran 20:1 for break-in, and 28:1 for racing. Our motors have lived long lives with at these ratios.
Castor oil seems to need a little lower ratio, 18:1 for break-in, and 24:1 for racing, according to many of the Europeans who have far more experience with Castor Oil then we did.
For those who read their piston/exhaust outlet/spark plug, should note the differences in the decomposition of Castor vrs Synthetics as outlined in Castor Oil 101. Synthetic simply burns away, where the decomposition fractions of Castor Oil tend to leave a brownish stain of varnish.
The proper color for mixture with Castor is more of a caramel-brown or tan then the "yellowed smokers tooth" color we see on the upper porcelain of the spark plug insulator. The piston dome should also have a dry tan appearance. Note the operative word "dry". Any sheen that could indicate liquid like oil is too rich. Inside the dome is the best place to look for any dampness. After pulling the head several times to inspect the color, we decided to use a bent Q-Tip to swab the roof of the combustion chamber for oil.
Castor oil will leave a little more ash everywhere, including the exhaust tip. The exhaust tip will also have a tan color effect but not as pronounced - it can still be a gray color.
Exhaust Gas Temps (EGT) will not change between Synthetic and Castor. EGT is not a reliable way to find peak power especially in water cooled motors. EGT is pretty reliable in warning of damaging temps like a stick if you have a reliable system. As Castor oil does not tend to burn like synthetic does it consumes little or no oxygen. Going from 28:1 to 24:1 also means less gasoline is being introduced. You may need to jet slightly richer with Castor then Synthetic.
There is no discernable power difference from Castor to Synthetic. The main advantage to Castor Oil over Synthetic is it remains a better lubricant as it has decomposed. Castor Oil won't make much difference on bottom end life, but it will extend the life to the top end.
- Status
