- Thu Sep 10, 2015 9:17 am
#50897
Thanks Scalyback; I'll try again....
My dealer also put 10W/40 in it, albeit that it had the right spec (i.e. SL and JASO MA); this is at least as important as the viscosity rating. Although I had some spare 10W/40 it was of lower spec and anyway I prefer not to mix oil brands so I bought a litre of what the dealer put in. He was unaware that the handbook specifies 15W/50 viscosity. Although I shall use 15W/50 of the right spec when I assume repsonsibility for maintenance, I am quite relaxed about using the 10W/40 for now because the weather is unlikely to get particularly warm again this year and the engine is being broken in, so a "thinner" oil is probably better. In my experience air and air/oil colled bikes usually run more quietly on "thicker" oil i.e. higher viscosity when the ambient temperature is high. That is my opinion on the oil to use; (many) others are bound to be available.....
Perhaps I should add another "farkle" (I must frequent too many American forums) to my bike. I already have a neat little Motrax watch type clock that has a nice stainless mounting strip that fits perfectly on the screw on the top of the headlight rim. It positions the clock angled towards me and IMHO is better than sticking it to the convex surface of the steering head nut, which anyway must make adjusting the head bearings awkward. My possible new farkle should perhaps be a spirit level glued to the tank to check the oil level....Seriously, whilst I can understand why the oil level changes dramatically on an oilhead BMW because there are oil galleries that lie horizontally above the sump and there is also a quantity in the oil cooler that needs to drain down, I really had thought that a vertical single cylinder engine with no cooler would not present such difficulty in checking the oil. I agree that it would be better to check the oil cold; it should not be beyond the wit of RE engineers to calculate the expansion and to determine the cold setting. Cold is cold, what temperature does running for a few minutes constitute, I wonder? What I intend to do is the same as I did on my oilhead Beemers. When I change the opil I shall drain as much of the old oil out as possible then measure what I put in to achieve a cold level half way up the sight glass. I'll then just check the level cold. I doubt that the oil will expand so much it'll blow a seal or even blow oil into the airbox. We'll see.
Re the starting on the kickstart, I've pretty much sussed this now. I believe the issue with poor cold starting stems from the inability of the EFI to squirt enough fuel into the inlet tract at kickstart cranking speeds. Over the last 15 years or so I've owned seven EFI bikes, most of which had manual cold start devices, but all of which took much less time for the fuel pump to prime when the ignition is switched on. The one on the RE takes ages (the manual syas a few seconds,so that it how it is , but it does seem slow. Because I can't flood the cylinder with fuel as with a tickler or proper choke, from stone cold I find that the best way to start on the kickstart is to switch the ignition on, let the fuel pump prime etc then ease the engine over compression, gently kick it over and repeat, to get another squirt of fuel into the cylinder, then give the long swinging kick et viola, we have ignition. From hot I just ease the piston over compression with the ignition on, then give it the proverbial kick. As the engine loosens it gets easier. Maybe my right leg muscle that has probably atrophied from kicking over my Triumph Tiger 100 (lean on it and it fires) is regaining some strength, who knows.
Hijack of my own thread: Apart from the poorly positioned guard on the exhaust shield being clouted by the kickstart, when I collected the box of goodies from the dealer, in addition to the cables and stuff,I was told that mine, being a two-colour camouflage jobbie has two rattle cans of touch-up paint. When I got home I was a bit surprised to find that one of them is blue..... If Eicher were responsible for the QA of the Indian space programme, I ask myself, would I volunteer for a free ride? I'll get back to you on that one.
Second hijack: In an earlier post I expalined about the allocation of the 600 limited edition Classic despatch bikes and that only the green ones like mine were the export ones. This information was given in good faith from the RE Offical website, news section. In this month's OBM one of the dealers is advertising the other two colours. Maybe export countries were allowed to bid in the auction. Who knows; I certainly don't know what is actually available in the UK, but I do know that mine has an ordinary chrome headlight rim, not black as mentioned in the advert, does not have a twin spark engine (or if it does, I can't find the other plug) and does have a nice leather pillion pad. I'd be interested to know from others what their LE has and what colour it is.
Third hijack: It's a shame one can't use emoticons on this bulletin board; there is a risk that someone might take umbrage at what is actually a tongue-in-cheek remark. I suppose, though, that without subscriptions it is unreasonable to expect this. I wonder if there would be any appetite amongst regular users to pay a small fee in exchange for having a more flexible and feature-laden forum? Just a thought.
