660 oil usage
 

Sorry to bother the Yam tech forum, as I'm on an Aprilia Pegaso, but consider it a nod of the hat, because I really do love the 660 engine.

I just wanted to to ask about oil usage. I've done about 25000 miles on my Peg in the last 4 years and I find long motorway miles, especially European motorways seem to really eat away at the oil. 600 miles at 130kph all day saw about 300ml of oil burn. on short runs and lower engine speeds oil usage tends to diminish.

Other friends with Pegs seem to never lose a drop of oil.

Now I'm not overly worried, some engines burn oil, others don't. There are advantages in both, but I was hoping to find out what the general consensus was on this engine?

Does yours burn oil?

I have 600 93mod and never refill between oilchanges, had one 89mod and same with Motul 10w-40 semisynth. Engine about 30-40k km. What is the mileage on this and what oil are you filling?

XT660r, 2007, 45000km.
Knocking wood, so far no consumption off oil. On motorways I am around 90-110 km/h. Mainly Elf, but have tried Motorex, Silkoline and Motul. Usually full synthetic, with few excursions off half synthetic. 10-40, 10-50 and 10-60.

I am generally using silkolene comp 4 10-40 which I understand is going a little over the top, but best to be careful than sorry!

Have a Tenere 660 and it burned a little oil at fast speeds and hot weather, but not much - thats up to 90 k kms.

Now past 100 k kms it burns a little more but I guess that is normal with that much on the clock.

My friends xtz660 uses some oil, even with a pretty fresh topend.

Just as you (and as normal) its the faster speeds tht does it, normal driving and its next to nothing.

oil burning might not be the culprit, it could be an engine breather issue

dont know how the engine breather is routed in a peg, likely to the airbox. after a spirited ride check if there are oily deposits in there

if you want to be more scientific, rig the vent temporarily to a plastic bottle and see if oil collects there. zip tie a plastic bottle to the frame and route the vent in there. simple. all my road racers have something like that....

and tell us what happened :)

:clap:Now that really is something I haven't considered. After a llong motorway thrash I have once noticed an oil film around the airbox. I'll look into the oil breather and let you know what I finnd.

Thanks for that:clap:

Yup, that combined with a bike thats easy to overfill with oil, and youre asking for trouble :)

+1 on jens, could be also the oil tank breather/overfilling... guess you know the procedure to checking oil level in XTs, right?

You could try changing your valve stem seals. They may be weeping oil.

If you're valves aren't leaking that maybe it's your cylinder. Glazed bore or worn rings.

It depends how far you want to look into it.


Has it got a lot of miles on it ?

100mm piston displaces a lot of air when it goes up/down , At higher rpm it can really push a lot of oil vapors out the breather . Even worse if a little compression gets by the rings .

About half a litre.
 

Both our 660's are on around 50k and always had only good quality semi synth. I like to change at 4000 and both bikes use about half a litre each in between.

Interesting to note the comments on the breather....I rerouted and repositioned ours right up under the tank....with a small k&N filter which does need cleaning out at oil changes. Great engine....shame the bike is so heavy though.

Oil doesn't evaporate. If you're losing it, its either being burned or its leaking. You get a bit of misting in a breather pipe but that's insignificant.

Well, we're on 46k kms, good oil used on prescribed oil changes +- 300 miles. I've done a few overfills onn the oil change, but the oil loss will go on beyond over filled and up to the need more oil mark.

So perhaps I am burning oil, as has been said, high constant revs really does burn it, whereas varied revs, local work seems to lose very little. I'd say I loose about 1litre every 6000 miles.

Haven't yet had a good look at the oil breather. I've located i, same shape as yam item, but it doesn't look too user servicable. Any tips?

Pull your plug.. Check the colour. Any excess sooting around the tail pipe too ??

As a side note....I had an R1 from new. Ran it in exactly as I should (painfull few days of self restraint) and by ten thousand miles it was burning a litre in a thousand miles. Yamaha technical said it was acceptable consumption for that engine.
I had the motor rebuilt and tuned by Bob Farnham (famed for building endurance race motors for Yam) who told me Fully synth is no good for that motor....use a good semi. After that no oil top up between services, sold the bike with 27k on it. I also had a Thunderace that used oil......but Honda's and Ducati's that didn't. Maybe it's just a Yam thing !!!!!

Ted, the plug is about right, perhaps a touch lean. Exhaust has no excessive soot. Would you think using loads of carb cleaner in the oil cleaner might help to clean things up?

Interesting thought about oil. Its becoming a confusing issue. Had a similar situation with mk5 tranny. Ran it on fully synth for a while and it sounded like a bag of nails and used some oil. On the ford oil which was semi, it purred along and didn't use any.

So is it Silkolene comp 4 or Super 4? The bloke from the shop who does seem half competent always says comp4?

Early Thunderace had a problem with oil consumption, i have latest model and its no issue. I use semisynth as recomended for this engine, R1 had problems with oil blow out from crankcase breather in high rpm.