Hydroplaning is when tires lose contact with the road and ride on top of water. It’s used here to explain how oil can keep parts from touching by acting like a thin cushion.
Viscosity is how “thick” or “resistant to flow” a fluid is. For engine oil, it affects whether the oil stays in place to keep metal parts from rubbing directly.
Term
crack shaft journal
The crankshaft has smooth “spins” that sit in bearings. Oil goes between them so the metal doesn’t rub directly as the crankshaft turns.
When an engine is running, oil can get squeezed into a thin, wedge-shaped layer between moving metal parts. That wedge helps keep the parts from rubbing directly against each other.
Operating temperature is the temperature the engine reaches when you’re driving normally. Oil gets thinner when it’s hot, so it has to stay effective at that heat level.
Cold starting is when you first start the engine after it’s been parked. The oil is colder and behaves differently, so it can take a little time for it to flow and protect the engine like it does when warm.
An oil film is the protective layer of oil between moving engine parts. If that layer stays thick enough, the parts slide without grinding each other down.
Term
petcox
This word looks like a transcription mistake, but the idea is that early engines had a small valve you opened to add fuel into the cylinders for starting. It was a workaround for oil that wouldn’t flow well when cold.
Wax formation is when parts of the oil turn solid in cold weather. Early oils could get “gummy” or solid, so the engine wouldn’t turn until the wax melted.
De-waxed oil is oil that’s been processed to remove waxy parts. That helps it stay fluid in cold temperatures so it can lubricate the engine right away.
A bearing is a part that helps moving metal parts slide smoothly. Oil sits in a small gap to keep the metal from rubbing directly. If the oil gets squeezed out, the parts can get too hot and lock up.
Clearance is the tiny gap between two parts that move against each other. Oil uses that gap to form a slippery layer. The gap has to be just right so oil can both protect and carry heat away.
“ID” here means the inside part of the connecting rod. They’re talking about where the bearing sits inside the rod. Better heat contact there helps move heat away instead of letting the bearing overheat.
These are bearing shell pieces that fit around the shaft like a “C” shape. They’re installed during assembly rather than being part of the rod. If they don’t sit with very good contact, heat can transfer less effectively and the bearing can run hotter.
Term
babbit
Babbitt is a special metal used on bearing surfaces to help parts slide smoothly. It’s chosen because it works well with oil and can handle friction better than many other metals. The idea is that it’s poured or cast onto the bearing area.
Overhead cam means the camshaft sits up in the cylinder head. That helps control the valves more precisely. It’s a common design on engines meant to rev or perform well.
Instead of just letting oil splash around inside the engine, a pump actively sends oil where it’s needed. This helps protect moving parts and also helps control engine heat.
Splash lubrication is when the engine’s moving parts throw oil around like a spray. It can work, but it doesn’t always get oil to every spot as reliably as a pump system.
If an engine doesn’t get enough lubrication, parts can start rubbing and get damaged (scuffing). If it gets bad enough, the parts can overheat and effectively lock together (seizure).
In a total-loss system, oil is used once to lubricate and then it’s not reused. Some of it can end up burned or expelled, so you may notice smoke or oil mess.
Liquid cooling systems use a coolant (often water mixed with additives) to move heat away from the engine. The host is comparing oil circulation to coolant circulation to explain how directing flow to the hottest areas first can even out temperatures.
“Normalize” here means making the engine temperatures more even. If you cool the hottest areas first, the whole engine can settle into a steadier temperature.
Harley-Davidson’s “big twin” is their large V-twin motorcycle engine. The point here is that Harley changed how it cools the engine to keep temperatures more even.
Term
twin cooled
“Twin cooled” means the two-cylinder engine was cooled in a way that treated both cylinders similarly. The speaker says the system was redesigned so one cylinder gets cooled first for better overall temperature control.
The cylinder head is the top part of the engine where combustion happens. It gets very hot, so cooling it effectively helps prevent overheating and wear.
The exhaust valve seat is the surface that the exhaust valve seals against. If it gets warped from heat, the valve may not seal as well, which can cause wear and running problems over time.
Car
Harley-Davidson 1200 Sportster
This is a Harley-Davidson Sportster motorcycle with a 1200cc engine. The problem discussed is that the exhaust valve seats could warp from heat, so Harley used oil passages in the engine head to help cool things down.
A V-twin is an engine with two cylinders arranged in a V shape. The host is basically saying that changing other major design choices could make the bike feel less like the classic Sportster.
Air-cooled means the engine sheds heat using airflow and metal fins, not a radiator and coolant. It’s a different approach to keeping engine temperatures under control.
Term
Rubbermount
Rubbermount means the engine is attached to the frame with rubber pieces. That helps reduce vibration you feel through the bike.
Coking is what happens when oil gets overheated and turns into sticky, hard carbon deposits. Those deposits can block the tiny oil channels, so the engine doesn’t get enough lubrication.
An oil cooler is an extra radiator-like device that helps keep engine oil from getting too hot. Cooler oil stays thicker, which helps it lubricate better.
Term
020
“020” is shorthand for a low-viscosity oil grade (often 0W-20). Lower-viscosity oils can help fuel economy, but the key question is whether they still protect the engine when things get hot.
Asperities are tiny bumps on metal surfaces. Good lubrication keeps those bumps from grinding against each other; if the oil film isn’t strong enough, the engine parts can wear faster.
Journals are the parts of a rotating shaft that sit in bearings. The oil forms a thin layer between them so they don’t rub directly and wear out quickly.
CAFE is a U.S. fuel-economy rule for car companies. It pressures manufacturers to make cars use less gas, and that can include using lower-friction oils.
Toyota is mentioned as an example of a carmaker using thinner oil grades. The discussion is about whether that oil still protects the engine when it’s working hard.
Multigrade oil is designed to work in both cold and hot conditions. It flows easier when the engine is cold, but it doesn’t get too thin when the engine is hot.
A non-Newtonian fluid changes how thick it behaves depending on what’s happening to it. So it can act easy to move in one situation, but resist movement in another.
Engine oils often include special long molecules that change shape with temperature. When it’s cold they coil up so the oil can still flow; when it’s warm they spread out to help the oil stay thick enough to protect the engine.
“Five-weight” is the oil grade that tells you how the oil behaves when it’s cold versus when the engine is hot. A lower “W” number usually means it flows more easily on cold mornings.
The starter is what spins the engine when you first turn the key or press the button. If the oil is too thick when it’s cold, the engine can be harder to spin.
Shear stress is the kind of “rubbing/dragging” force that happens when oil is squeezed and flows between moving parts. Over time, that stress can make some oils lose their ability to protect the engine the way they should.
Cylinder walls are the inner surfaces of the engine cylinders that the piston rings and piston skirt interact with. The segment uses them as part of the lubrication zone where oil is subjected to shear and can degrade.
Pistons are the reciprocating components that move up and down in the cylinder to compress the air-fuel mixture and create power. The segment mentions them to describe where oil is sheared and where lubrication is critical.
“Falling out of grade” means the oil stops behaving like it’s supposed to. After wear and heat, it can lose its thickness/viscosity, so it may not protect the engine as well.
Oil analysis is testing used oil samples to assess wear and oil condition. In this segment, the host says sending used oil to an analysis lab can reveal whether viscosity-control additives (like VI improvers) have broken down.
Used oil is oil that has been in service and has accumulated contaminants and additive depletion. The segment treats used oil as the input for oil analysis to determine whether viscosity-control additives have broken down.
VI improver is shorthand for viscosity index improver, a polymer additive that boosts how well oil resists thinning when heated. The segment describes how VI improvers can shear and break down, contributing to “falling out of grade.”
Oil change interval is the scheduled mileage/time between oil changes. The host argues that because oil can degrade (including VI improvers), it’s worth pausing to consider interval timing and using analysis to avoid changing too early or too late.
A quart is a unit of volume commonly used for engine oil in the U.S. The host uses it to emphasize that performance-focused motorcycle oils can be expensive per unit volume.
Junior Johnson was a well-known stock-car racing figure. Here he’s mentioned as someone who pushed for engine oil changes to reduce drag and improve how the engine runs.
Chrysler Super Finish is a finishing process used on crankshaft components to achieve extremely smooth, consistent surfaces. The smoother the journal surface, the more reliably an oil film can form—even when using lower-viscosity base oils.
0W10 is an SAE viscosity grade indicating the oil’s cold-start behavior (“0W”) and its viscosity at operating temperature (“10”). The host connects these “crazy” low-number grades to the idea that smoother surfaces and controlled clearances can allow thinner oil while still maintaining protection.
5W20 is an SAE multi-grade oil rating. The “5W” part describes how the oil behaves at cold temperatures, while the “20” describes its viscosity at high operating temperatures (the host uses about 200°F / 212°F as the reference point). It doesn’t mean the oil gets thicker as it heats up; it means it resists viscosity drop compared with a single-grade oil.
Term
hetero atoms
Hetero atoms are “non-carbon” atoms inside the oil molecule. Their presence can change how the oil molecules pack together and how the oil thickens or behaves when it gets cold.
Term
branched chain structures
Instead of oil molecules being straight like spaghetti, branching means they have “side paths.” That helps the oil stay usable when it’s cold rather than turning thick or waxy.
PAO is a synthetic oil base made by building oil molecules from smaller pieces. That lets formulators make oil that performs more consistently, especially across temperature changes.
A catalyst is like a helper that makes a chemical reaction happen faster. It helps create the oil molecules you want without the catalyst being used up.
Oxidation is what happens when oil slowly reacts and breaks down from exposure to oxygen. When that happens, the oil can stop protecting the engine as well and can contribute to deposits.
PAO is a type of synthetic oil base stock. It’s designed to stay stable inside the engine longer, so it’s less likely to turn into sticky deposits or sludge over time.
Gum and varnish are sticky deposits that can build up when engine oil ages. They can make the inside of the engine dirtier and can interfere with how parts move and how oil circulates.
The host is using a 1940 Chevy as a cautionary story. When he opened it up, the oil looked like thick black sludge, which is a sign the oil had broken down and left deposits.
In some engines, push rods transfer motion to the valve system. Here, the exhaust push rod seized and broke, which then damaged other parts and prevented the engine from turning over normally.
Compression is how much pressure the engine builds inside the cylinder. Higher compression usually means the engine is harder to turn by hand, especially if something is seized.
Wear is how engine parts slowly get damaged over time from rubbing and friction. The key point here is that the first seconds after starting are especially hard on the engine.
Castor oil is being used as an example of a lubricant that sticks well to metal. That sticking helps protect parts when the normal oil layer isn’t fully doing its job.
“Polar” means the molecule has electrical “ends” that attract to metal. That attraction helps the oil cling to surfaces so parts are better protected, especially during difficult conditions like cold starts.
Frank Whittle was an early jet-engine pioneer. The host brings him up to give historical context for how oil chemistry affected early jet/turbine experiments.
This is a special kind of oil made for turbine engines. Turbines run extremely hot, so the oil has to resist heat-related breakdown better than regular oils.
TCP (tricresyl phosphate) is an additive that was used to reduce wear. But it could cause side effects like changing how much clearance there is in bearings, so it fell out of use.
ZDDP is an oil additive that helps prevent metal parts from wearing out by creating a protective layer. Newer emissions systems (like catalytic converters) can be sensitive to it, but some older-style valve setups need it for protection.
The exhaust stroke is when the engine pushes the burned gases out. Oil still coats the cylinder walls, and heat can make some oil components evaporate.
In an engine, the power stroke is when the fuel burns and pushes the piston down to make the car move. Oil has to protect the cylinder walls during this hot, high-pressure moment.
Base stock is the “main oil” inside a bottle of engine oil. If parts of it are more volatile, they can evaporate in the hot engine and end up as exhaust smoke or unburned fuel-like gases.
Unburned hydrocarbons are “stuff from the fuel/oil” that doesn’t burn completely in the engine. If oil evaporates, some of it can show up in the exhaust as these unburned molecules.
Piston rings are metal bands on the piston that help seal the engine. The top rings are the ones closest to the hottest combustion area, so oil that evaporates easily can make lubrication and sealing worse.
Car
Norton A50
The Norton A50 is a classic British motorcycle. The point here is that the wrong oil can evaporate in the hot engine, which can make you burn more oil.
Car
Norton Commando
The Norton Commando is a classic Norton motorcycle. The host says switching to a better-suited oil helped it burn less oil.
The Nürburgring is a well-known racing track in Germany. The story uses it as the backdrop for how teams handled oil problems during old-school racing.
Preheating oil means warming it up before starting the engine. That helps it flow faster so the engine gets lubrication sooner, especially when it’s cold.
Two-stroke oils are made for two-stroke engines, where oil has to be present during combustion to lubricate the moving parts. The host is talking about how different oil bottles were constantly being marketed as “better.”
Term
Smokeless
“Smokeless” is a claim that an oil will make less visible smoke from the exhaust. Whether it works depends on the oil and how the two-stroke fuel/oil mixture burns.
Yukon fluid is mentioned as a component that went into older two-stroke oil mixtures. The story suggests that different branded oils often used similar base ingredients.
Here, “synthesis” means making synthetic oil using chemical processes. The host is saying synthetic isn’t the only way to create an oil with the right properties.
Digital fuel injection means the computer controls how much fuel goes into the engine. That helps the car start and idle smoothly, especially in cold weather.
Ring sealing is how the piston rings keep gases from leaking into the wrong areas. When it works well, less oil gets burned or escapes where it shouldn’t.
Nicosil is a special coating inside the engine’s cylinder. It makes the cylinder wear-resistant so the piston can run with tighter clearances and the engine lasts longer.
Term
bore plate
A bore plate is something used during engine rebuilding to help set up the cylinder correctly. The goal is to make sure the piston fits with the right clearance so the engine runs properly.
A carburetor is an older way to mix fuel with air before it goes into the engine. It can be harder to keep perfectly tuned than modern computer-controlled systems.
Spark plugs are the parts that create the spark to ignite the fuel-air mix. If they look a certain way, they can hint whether the engine is running too rich or too lean.
EPA is the U.S. agency that sets emissions rules for cars. Those rules affect what tuning changes are allowed because the car has to pass emissions tests to be sold.
The temperature gauge is designed to be reassuring. It may not show every small change in engine temperature, and it’s usually meant to only move a lot if something is truly wrong.
It means the company tries to keep repair and warranty spending under control after you buy the car. Better early detection can reduce how often things break and how much fixing them costs.
Oil pressure is a measure of how hard the engine’s oil pump is pushing oil around. It’s important because the engine needs oil flow to protect moving parts.
A warranty fix is a repair the manufacturer pays for (or covers) because the problem happened within the warranty period. It’s like getting the car fixed without paying out of pocket.
A recall is when a car maker has to fix a problem on cars already sold, usually because it could be unsafe. A warranty fix can be narrower and doesn’t always involve every car.
A resistor is an electrical component that can reduce or shape an electrical signal. They added one to the wiring so the gauge would show a more accurate reading.
The “weights” are parts inside the timing/ignition mechanism that move as the engine spins faster. Moving them changes the timing so the engine runs correctly.
LIVE
Welcome to the Cycle World Podcast. I'm Mark Hoyer, Editor-in-Chief.
I'm with Kevin Cameron, our technical editor. Thanks for watching us, joining us on YouTube.
You can also get this on Patreon without commercials. If you join us, become a member,
become a paying member on Patreon and no commercials. And so you can get this and more
content from us. Thanks for listening wherever you are. Today, we're going to be talking about
modern lube oils. Oil, what is oil? What kind of oils do we like?
Specifically, we seem to like synthetic oils. So we're going to focus on that today.
And Kevin's obviously thought about this and we all need oil to have our dreams come true on
motorcycles. It's everywhere. So it's really fundamental. Even your electric bikes need a
well, mechanical devices such as engines and gearboxes can't function without lubricant films
to separate the surfaces in contact. And in order to dynamically separate surfaces,
we have to provide a liquid that is swept into the loaded zone by the motion of the parts themselves
as fast as the load squeezes this liquid out at the sides of the contact area.
Now, the desired result is that the load doesn't touch the non-moving part of the assembly.
There is no surface-to-surface contact. I think our driving or riding a motorcycle
analogy might be hydroplaning on a puddle. The surfaces are not touching. That's great lubrication.
Only in that case, it's the inertia of the fluid that drives it under the front tire and causes
that feeling, which gets your attention. But of course, when it's easy to think of liquids
as being like water, water has very low friction within itself. What we need is a fluid that
resists being squeezed out enough that it can separate the two surfaces as the motion continues,
as between a piston and the cylinder wall, as between a crack shaft journal and the bearing that
supports it. This friction, we call viscosity. Viscosity is the resistance of layers of fluid
to sliding over one another. It's hard to imagine a fluid, which you're riding in a boat and you
trail your fingers over side and you feel the cool water splashing past your
little fingernails. It's very insubstantial, but in this case oils are fluids which are provided
with enough viscosity to be useful in the task that I just described. Usually, the production
of a lubricant film is referred to as wedge formation, and it's easy to understand why,
because if you imagine a piston sliding on a cylinder wall and the motion is causing fluid
that's on the cylinder wall to be dragged under the advancing piston, why doesn't the fluid just
squirt out at the sides and leave nothing? Well, we answered that already. It's viscosity that
provides the resistance, but it does come out the sides of the bearing at some rate. At the back
of the bearing, a lot of fluid has been lost, so the film is thinner there, so we have a wedge-shaped
film that is formed. Now, it's well known that oils lose viscosity as their temperature rises.
If these oils which consist of chain or ring structures of carbon atoms bonded to one another,
each one bonded in turn to one or more hydrogen atoms, these chains I think of when we boil spaghetti
and you see these these long sinuous strands of spaghetti, each one touching
50 or 100 others, and you can see that there is going to be resistance to sliding over one another,
and in the molecular case that resistance is various random short-range attractions
form and are broken as the strands slide over one another. That is the source of viscosity.
As the temperature rises, those carbon structures begin, they have more energy,
temperature is a measure of molecular energy, so that they're less able to form those bonds,
and they slide over one another more easily. Well, what if the oil we choose is able to form
lubricant films wedge-shaped, in the case of a round journal and a round bearing,
the wedge is formed by the journal being pushed slightly off side so that the space between
the journal and the bearing is tapered. So, what if the viscosity declines
so much as we rise to the operating temperature of the engine that the oil wedge no longer forms?
Well, it makes the machine unviable, we can't use it. So, that means that we have to provide
a viscosity enough to fly the parts on this oil film at operating temperature.
Now, the other problem is of course, cold starting, because as the temperature of the lubricant declines,
a number of mechanisms conspire to thicken it, to increase its viscosity.
Possibly to the point where the starter won't turn the engine.
And what we're interested in, therefore, is the slope of the viscosity versus temperature
line, which is called viscosity index. What we want is a high VI viscosity index, such that
not only can we cold start the engine, but when it warms up, the loads and surfaces that we've
provided in the design of the engine are enough to maintain an oil film, and thus,
the whole mechanism does not scuff and seize. Now, what happens here is that
there has been a great progress from the early days when oil was simply
a certain range of boiling temperatures when they distilled crude oil in a distillation tower.
And if the machinery to be lubricated was very hot and the loads were very high, for example,
in the air-cooled engines in summertime, we would want a more viscous oil so that as it
lost viscosity as it heated up, it would still be able to carry the load.
But again, we have to bear in mind this concept of viscosity index. How fast
does the lubricant lose viscosity as it warms up? Well, early oils, as I say,
were just what boiled out of crude between two different temperatures. And petroleum consists
of hundreds of different molecular structures. Most of them are hydrocarbons, that is,
structures consisting of carbon and hydrogen atoms.
When early oils became cold, they solidified. And if you look at early automobile engines
in museums or at antique meets, you'll see that atop each cylinder head is a small
petcox normally closed. For cold starting, you open the petcox and pour a few ccs of gasoline
into each cylinder. Then you close the petcox, waited a certain time, and then got on the crank
and to see if you could turn the engine. If the gasoline had dissolved the solidified oil
into a liquid again, you could proceed with your starting procedure and have a running engine. Well,
they found that this congealing of oil at non-running temperatures was a
the result of wax formation. So they developed techniques to remove the wax, de-waxed oil.
And at the appearance of each problem with an oil, chemists would be put on the job to come up with
the solution. Another important task for oil is cooling, because if you put a drop of oil in a
bearing, it fills the clearance space. Why do you need any more than that? Well, first of all,
the load is going to squeeze the oil out at the sides of the bearing and it will be lost.
So soon there will be no support to the revolving journal and the thing will overheat and seize.
So the clearance is made slightly larger than it needs to be, so that an excess amount of oil
flows through the bearing as a coolant, so that the heat of friction in the oil, which is viscosity,
is carried away rather than accumulating. This is such a problem in some kinds of racing engines.
In Formula One, for example, they went back to the old practice of casting the bearing material
on the connecting rod ID, because a separate C-shaped inserts put into the bearing
as the engine is assembled involved passing heat from the bearing into the rod,
and the bearing insert and the rod are not in intimate contact. They're not as one.
You have clamped them together very firmly for the very reason that you want heat generated
in the rod and the bearing inserts to have somewhere to go. We've provided extra clearance
in the bearing so that more oil will flow through and carry away some of the heat,
but this practice of making the bearing metal bonding it to the rod itself is the way
connecting rods were made more than 100 years ago. So it's back to fundamentals in that area.
Aerial square four pouring your babbit. Yes. Scraping.
Well, Eugene Goodman at Velliset in the early 1920s decided that... Does that even count as a drink?
I don't know. You said it, not me. You're not making rules here. It's our loyal supporters
who's comments create community. And brighten my day, definitely. Yes, indeed. Brighten our days.
Eugene Goodman, his company had been making two strokes and a former editor of Cycle World,
David Edwards, had a Velliset two stroke in his office.
Goodman decides if we're going to go the four stroke route, let's look around and see what's
hot. And they went to Brooklyn's and they went to the Allaman and whatnot. And they saw overhead
cam. Okay, we'll have one of those. So they built an overhead cam single and they provided it with
pumped circulating oil system. Now, early motorcycles, you just added a couple of ounces
of oil to the crankcase and relied upon splash to lubricate everything. And when you saw that there
was no longer smoke trailing behind your bike, you gave a couple of strokes on a hand or foot
operated pump and fresh oil from a tank was delivered to the crankcase. And in this way,
you barely stayed ahead of scuffing and seizure as your machine drew the destination toward you.
Well, I love on some of the old bikes the little percolator that they have so that you could see
that oil is circulating. There's a little glass dome and a little pipe. And it goes and you can
see. Oh, yes, the little pulses. And as it if it starts to, you know, decline, then you go, oh,
you might need a little and you put some more back in there. And that's your, they call it a total
loss. But it's six around, you know, on other things, you'll have some on your pants. I'm certain.
He noticed Eugene Goodman noticed that engines running with circulating oil,
pumped recirculating oil, had a more level temperature distribution. In other words,
the presence of the oil touching all the moving parts inside the engine
cooled the hottest parts. And it warmed the coolest parts. So this was a valuable function of the oil.
So we pause and talk about the order of doing that and how that evolved because it's also happened
in liquid cooling systems with ethylene glycol and water. Cooling the hottest parts first, pumping
the oil to the hottest parts first to cool them and to bring the temperature to normalize the
temperature over the entire engine like Kevin was talking about. And recently with Harley-Davidson's
big twin, the engine that they're now running also in their race bikes, the cooling system was
redesigned and it's no longer twin cooled, it's just cooled. They pump the coolant to the rear
cylinder head first because that one is blocked from airflow. So the coolest coolant hits that
hot cylinder head and then normalizes the temperature as it travels forward back to the radiator
through the front cylinder head, which is better cooled by air. And that's what they're doing with
oil and engines is getting that oil up to a cylinder head and letting it rain down and
bring it back to the crankcase from those hot combustion, combustion areas, the exhaust bridge.
Yes, I guess. And of course, as we know, in former times,
the 1200 Sportster had problems with exhaust valve seat distortion. So they
circulated oil through drillings in the cylinder head to correct that. Now,
purely rational as opposed to emotional people would say, why didn't they just want to cool that
thing? The answer is, shut up. Really good. The answer is, of course, that people liked the
Sportster because it was Sportster. And if it were given water cooling, it would become
something else. It would lose some of its identity. What if you water cooled it and made it a 60
degree V twin? Then how would you feel about it? We're saying this, so we're just making a joke
because Harley-Davidson announced very recently that they're bringing back the 883 Air-Cooled
Sportster in some form. They've been very coy about it. A popular claim. And we have a very
loyal and large Facebook following. They are active and they're especially active when they're
active. And let me tell you that an 883 Sportster post on Facebook is active. So there's a lot of
passion out there. Well, the thing about 883 was it was a place to start. If you wanted to live
the Harley life, if you wanted that sound, and there are millions who do, no matter how much
the Sportbike folks want to make fun of them. And of course, there's fun to be made because
there are motorcycles whose power mainly goes into making characteristic noises rather than
thrusting them down the road at a high rate of knots. And not everyone is sympathetic to that.
But the supporters are. And they, like Ollie, yes. The broad motorcycle culture has
a vacant imprint in its mind that is shaped like a Sportster. Shaped like a big twin. Shaped
like an FL from 1939. I mean, it's just there. And yeah, bringing that back, it clicks right in.
It makes the sound. I will say again, the Sportster was its own unique thing. From 2003,
Rubbermount to now, or the last Sportster in 2022, I think, they sold a million. And again, on no
technical merit, but definitely on an emotional merit. And they're good motorcycles. Don't get
me wrong, they're not, you know, but it's heavier than an MTO7 or an MTO9. It's not as agile. And
yet it exists and it moves and people like it. And people are moved by it. Yes. Moved by it.
So back to the drillings. I asked one of the engineers that these drillings existed. I asked
one of the engine guys, do you get any coking in those drillings? No, no coking. So that was good.
Because if you cook the oil too hot, it'll coke and it could plug up your little drillings and then.
Just say no coking in an authoritative voice and the problem will be over with.
Well, in the 1930s, Benelli had enough experience in racing that they saw that
when their air-cooled race engines got pretty hot on a summer day, the oil lost enough viscosity to
become a problem. What is the correct answer? Put in thicker oil or install an oil cooler?
They patented it. Of course, the large aircraft piston engines droning overhead all had oil coolers.
So that was an historical point. Then in the early 70s, when MV began to build truly modern
air-cooled racing engines, they found it necessary to follow the trend of narrowing the valve angle,
swinging the stems of the intake and exhaust valves toward one another, creating a flatter
combustion chamber that lit up and burned more quickly. But in the old days, with the valves
splayed far apart, in between there was plenty of room for cooling fins directly on top of the hot
cylinder head. So how are you going to cool the cylinder head when the valve angle closes up
and there's no place to put those fins? Oil. And that was the time when you began to see MV
road race bikes with the front number plate drilled full of innumerable holes to feed air
to an oil cooler directly behind them. So that was all in an attempt to keep oil from losing
so much viscosity that it could no longer support the loads that it had to.
When should we talk about things like VeloSets where I really want to run a 2050
and particularly modern cars where you're doing 020, where they're really hammering down the
asperities on the journals. Just want to say asperities. Because it's so interesting,
there's so much chatter about it on the interwebs. 020 is ruining your engine and the Toyota
they're using 020 to meet CAFE to get the mileage standards, lowering the viscosity
oil, tightening the clearances and making it dark. Well, you're talking about multigrades.
Yeah, so yes. The great thing, the reason why multigrades exist, which behave like a light oil
at low temperature, but as they warm up, they act like they were a heavier oil.
This is done because viscosity index by by its lonesome cannot do the whole job.
Can anyone remember a poor overworked six-fold starter trying to start an engine
in 30 below? Well, not 30 below. I can't say that. But cold enough to make a big difference.
And you think it can't happen. Well, they devised an amazing system to further broaden
the viscosity range of an oil such that it would be viscous enough at an operating temperature
to handle all the normal loads and yet would not solidify or become so thick and at lower
temperatures as to make the engine unstartable. Is this non-Newtonian? I've heard of non-Newtonian
fluids. Yes, well. There's an armor that is easy to deform at low speed. So it's a body armor, D3O.
And this goo, they call it, you stick your finger in it slowly and it's easy to deform.
If you hit it with a hammer, it does not deform. So you have this. Silly putty.
Yeah, you have this compliant, easy to move armor. But when it's called the duty by velocity,
it firms up and absorbs the impact. Non-Newtonian. It just sounds the opposite of your expectation
is what I would just put non-Newtonian on everything. You may have to look at your
assailant and see what weapon he's carrying. Yes. Oh, go ahead. Or can't you, here, let me lend you
mine. You got the drop on me. Well, what they hit upon was we'll start with a base oil that is very
light, has a low viscosity, and we'll add chemistry to it that causes it to lose less
viscosity as it warms up than it would if it were a single-weight, light base oil.
And this takes the form of long chain molecules, which in low temperatures become more compact.
They roll up in a ball and make almost no contribution to viscosity. The five-weight oil
in your crankcase pours, it pumps, and at that temperature it lubricates perfectly well,
because it has the viscosity needed to support the loads. Well, well,
goes the starter. Yes, indeed. Make sure your terminals are tight. Yep. And
as the engine warms up, those rolled up in a ball, long chains begin to extend themselves.
And they do so at a rate such that their contribution to viscosity keeps up with the
needs of the loads in the engine for which it was designed. Now, this is all very well
if the long chains remain long. And there are a number of different
chemistries that are used for this, and some are El Chippo and don't last all that long,
and some are more expensive, or at least they charge more for them, and they last longer.
So if those long molecules begin to break up under the constant
shear stress of what's happening in bearings between pistons and cylinder walls, all those
molecules are tumbling and rubbing against each other, and frankly, being sometimes torn to pieces.
This is called falling out of grade. And oil analysis people will be glad to tell you
if this is happening. You send them some of your used oil, they check it out, and they
draw the conclusion that the viscosity-improving agent, the VI improver, this long chain molecule
that rolls up into a ball when it's cold, has two cats on a sofa.
Those have broken. And so their average length is not up to the task, and your engine is under
lubricated once it's warmed up. So this is a good time to pause for oil change interval,
and there's lots of different advice out there. Number one, you can follow your
manufacturer motorcycle handbook, and you'd be pretty safe with that. You could knock it down
a little if you're like, well, I ride hard, or et cetera. What Kevin said in the sport bike
performance handbook that I reviewed when I was an editor at Cycle News, when that book was published
in 98, 97, when that came out, I think. Kevin had a section in the sport bike performance handbook
that talked about oil change interval, and one of the points he made is said,
you could reduce your interval to every five minutes, and things would be
wonderful in your engine, wouldn't they? So it is great to do an analysis. You don't have to
analyze it every time. You just need to analyze it a few times, and you don't even have to do a
complete oil change. You could just drain some off and then stick the plug back in real quick,
and see where you stand before you change it. Because this fancy stuff that we put in power
sports motorcycle things, boy, you can spend a lot of money on a quart of oil. Used to buy 12
quarts for $10 for the old Triumph TR6 back in the day. It's different now, but it's good to
know the truth. The analysis is there. It's affordable. It's $40 or less. You mail it in a pouch,
and they send you back information. Yep. Period. Information. Good to have.
And falling out of grade is just one of a variety of problems that an oil can suffer.
Now, let's think about, oh, there's, of course, something that went along with this
multi-grade business. And that is that Junior Johnson, stock car builder,
felt that there was too much energy going into banging oil around inside of his engines.
And he wanted to reduce the bearing clearance and reduce the viscosity of the oil. And he went to
talk to old timers and they said, oh, yeah, we used to do that all the time with the big radial
engines. We finished the crankpins with a process called Chrysler Super Finish, which produced
a truly cylindrical, not just shiny, truly cylindrical surface with very low surface asperities.
And that allowed the use of low viscosity base stock because it would let the surfaces touch
if they were as rough as production parts before that time. Honda introduced this super finish
on Goldwing Cranks in 76. So that's been a while. But the idea is, if the surfaces are very smooth,
you can make the, you can allow the minimum oil film at the point of tremendous load
to become thinner than normal and still carry the load properly. And that is where these crazy
oils, 0W10 and so forth, have originated. And as Mark was pointing out, in some cases,
the manufacturer of the vehicle has adopted that oil officially to make emissions, to reach some
level of something that they measure. And in fact, it might be better for your engine to go
up one level of viscosity to be sure. This is a claim that is made.
So what the numbers mean, a 5W20 means that at zero degrees, it behaves like a five-weight oil
at that temperature. But that it behaves like a 20-weight oil at boiling water temperature,
roughly 200 degrees Fahrenheit, 212. And that is not, it doesn't mean that it's getting more viscous
as it heats up. It just means that it is not losing viscosity as fast as it otherwise would.
So we have the viscosity index to begin with, which was the reason why everyone raved about
Pennsylvania crude, because oils made from that crude had higher viscosity indices than
crudes from other fields. And now people know enough to be able to say what is good in the
oil. And that's what is an ideal molecule. They found out that long straight chains either formed
crystallites or became thicker and thicker at an alarming rate as they grew cooler. So
six carbons in a ring weren't so hot because they were so often hetero atoms,
atoms other than the ones you want to be there associated with them. So what they were left
with was certain branched chain structures that were the ideal molecule. And the polyalpha
olefin base oil that is used to make mobile one and other PAO-based oils is instead of being refined
from crude oil, it is synthesized from smaller pieces that are polymerized together to produce
branched chains where the chains are of a desired length. And how do they do all of this?
They do it with catalysts. It sounds like the digital versus analog audio argument.
It really does. What I will say is I have an associated friend who is a street freestyler.
So he's intimate with how to use a clutch. His clutch control obviously is among the best in
the world. And he does many, many interesting things with his clutch and engine power and torque,
wheelies, stopbies, you name it, all the stuff going on. And he's a connoisseur of the engagement
point in the clutch. And he says he doesn't like 100% synthetic. He likes a blend because
there's something in the natural oil that gives him a better feel and a better engagement in that
window. And to me, it's like, well, I like listening to vinyl because it has infinite
vibrations. And it's not just parsing out the hurts and delivering them without background
noise. And how do you know that it hasn't been digitally compressed? Which means throwing away
little nuances that you want to hear. Oh, that's when the compression is why radio sounds so bad.
This average is out to this. So forget that. We'll just... Yeah, you don't need it.
Don't need it. So they produce this wonderful molecule, which has a very high
viscosity index up 130, 140. And because it is synthesized from
small MERS, isomer, polymer, little units, there are no hetero atoms. There's no nitrogen,
no sulfur, no metals attached. There are no aromatic compounds with their weak
bonds that are subject to oxidation. So this oil, this PAO based stock, is much more resistant to
gum and varnish formation and to loss of its properties because there's nothing in there,
but what is intended to be there? And of course, I have my tiresome way of talking about this,
which is the drill sergeant wishes that every soldier was like the 17th guy in the line here.
He's not too tall. He's in real good shape. He's a smart guy, but he knows how to take orders.
Not too troublesome and a very capable person. Why can't they all be like him?
And PAO is an approach to producing an army of identical, highly capable molecules.
And this is, it's great to have oils that resist oxidation. I messed around with a 1940 Chevy
when I was in high school. And when I lifted the valve cover off, it was just, it was like a
horror movie hanging curtains of black sludge, some of which dropped off as I lifted the thing.
Oh, maybe I should just put it back. I bought a 1958 trophy that had been
parked for decades. The story was the owner had kickstarted it and it broke his foot.
And so he just kind of leaned it up against the wall. And what I found is that one of the
exhaust push rods, exhaust valves had seized and broken the push rod and kind of buggered up
the rocker arm. So it was hard to kickstart because compression must have been, you know,
400 psi on that one because it was, it was very, it was not letting it go anywhere. So it was very
hard to kick. And anyway, by the time I got it and needed a top end and I'm like, well, I'll get
through that. And I took the oil tank off. I looked inside and I said, wow, it still has oil.
It wasn't oil. It was, it was a waxy substance, black and terrible at the bottom of the oil tank.
And it took a lot of physical removal. I took a plastic handle from a spatula. The spatula was
long gone, but it had, it was just a long plastic stick. I knew it wouldn't scratch anything. And
I just started chipping away, putting a little solvent, you know, trying your various acetones
and lacquer thinners and, oh gosh, maybe some MEK. Save the MEK first.
I'm very sympathetic because yesterday my wife's
mowing tractor ran out of gas and one of the sons smelled the different fuel drums
and the one that smelled most like gasoline was diesel. So I was called upon
to remove every bit of that diesel from the tank, the lines, the pump, the flow bowl, etc.
Oh boy. And of course, then it started and ran fine. But there was much between. Hard to light, gosh.
So, better to create these ideal soldier oils that are strongly resistant. Their
carbon to carbon and carbon to hydrogen bonds are not susceptible to oxidation
because there aren't any ring structures that have those weak bonds holding them together
where oxygen can get in there and nibble on it. So we don't have that horrible problem with this
new type of oil. So to remove the vulnerable ring compounds, they at first use solvent extraction.
Well, here's the solvent that favors this stuff. So we'll mix it together, then we'll
recover the solvent with the undesired aromatics and it would reduce the population
to a certain degree. You know, Kevin, I just want to say that if only you had been around
during my chemistry class in high school and my ensuing chemistry classes in college,
I might have had a much better time and my topics would have been a lot more relevant
to my enthusiasm. So I appreciate this very much. I also like your graphic representation
or audible representation of oxidization taking a bite. Chewing in there. Well, the central problem
of petroleum derived oils is excessive diversity. So many different molecular species, so many
hetero atoms, so many contaminants of various kinds and refining the refining process usually meant
for so many years, taking out the stuff that was bad and burning it for process heat.
But then chemists began to say, you know, we've been doing some great stuff with catalysts
for a number of years. Why don't we just make a catalyst that will bite into those ring compounds
and open them up into a straight chain and then we can reform them chemically by passing them
through processes that we have developed to make them into the ideal lube oil molecule.
Now, this business of developing catalysts, our bodies are filled with catalysts and they are
called enzymes. If your body does not produce lactase, which is an enzyme that helps to
disassemble the milk sugar lactose, then you have lactose intolerance.
And these enzymes are fiendishly clever. They have shapes that are intimately
complementary to the shapes of the substrate molecule on which they're supposed to act.
And they assemble in the mad thermal confusion of the reactor. They assemble the
sensitive bond in the substrate molecule is deformed by the catalyst in such a way that
the desired change is much more likely to take place. And some of them are so marvelously specific.
How, by what process could these extremely clever things be created? Well, if you've got a billion
years, a lot of things become possible that the human lifespan regards as laughably unlikely.
Well, we're very good at accelerating things, though, aren't we? We can hit the pedal of the
metal when we start thinking about it. It's pretty cool. Yes, indeed. So one of the other things that
we want from lube oil is that if the oil film breaks down, as it does during cold starting,
what's going to protect the surfaces from each other? And people in the oil industry discovered
early on that most of the wear that takes place takes place during startup.
What a tedious thing. But they also knew that certain oils, such as castor, the oil of the
castor bean, are highly polar. Each molecule is electrically neutral, but the charge is
the positive and the negative are not located together. They're located at some distance apart.
So there are positive and negative fields around these things, and they can induce the opposite
in metal surfaces, and that makes them stick. Castor oil is supreme at this. And diesters
are designed to have this property, which is why when polyalpha olefins are found not to make a
successful oil because they are non-polar, they just mix some diesters with it,
presto, all the good stuff. We like our ZDDP, too, or synthetic to begin with.
In the early days of gas turbines, when Frank Whittle, for example, was performing his experiments
and driving himself close to madness because the Royal Air Force said, well, it was your duty to
design the jet engine. We'll take it now. Thank you. They had mineral oil in the 1950s, and afterward
they used these diester oils because they were polar. They stuck to surfaces. And then sometime
in the 1960s, they came up with neopental polyol esters, which had wonderful properties, including
the one that the gas turbine people are especially interested in, and that is
strong resistance to degradation from heat. And I have a little box up in the shop filled
with neo two-stroke oil. I never actually used any, but I bought a little box of it,
and that's it's just the third generation gas turbine oil.
Well, other things to prevent cold start exaggerated wear are anti-wear materials such as
oh, what was it, TCP. At the end of the 1950s, one of the oil manufacturers
advertising that they're gasoline to contain tricressel phosphate. It's a very aggressive
anti-wear that I guess it had the property of increasing bearing clearances. So it was discontinued,
but they've come up, they've got a million others because these catalyst people, they're
very creative. Well, widely known ZDDP, zinc, diethyl alcohol phosphate.
Yes. Don't use too much anymore for protection of your catalytic converter, but
your flat tapping engines love it. Now for further evidence of
that humans are fascinated by problems and just won't let go of them until they've come up with
solution are these clathrate based catalysts. The clathrate is a cage molecule,
and they can create these molecules with a door, an opening. The opening is of a size
it can be tailored to admit only molecules of the desired size, and they can then approach
on its throne the catalyst metal itself and be thereby altered into a different form and then
exit to make room for others coming in for the same treatment. This is wonderful stuff,
a box that only lets in molecules of the desired size. Well, nature of course, having had all that
R&D time, creates these shapes that are impossibly closely complementary so that there is no
ambiguity. People lacking the key are not admitted to this club.
Well, these wonderful poly alpha olefin plus diastere oils are such as mobile one,
are the current big noise in the night. It probably won't remain that way forever.
Oh, one other thing I wanted to say about multigrades. People were critical of multigrades because
when the oil is spread out on the cylinder wall during the power stroke and into the exhaust stroke,
what is happening to that layer of oil? The most volatile parts of the oil, i.e. the base stock,
are evaporating. They are becoming unburned hydrocarbons which are now being merrily pumped out
into the exhaust system. So there was some flap about that. The diesel people were very
suspicious of multigrades. What's going to happen to my top piston rings? What's going to happen?
They're cooled motorcycle guys are real suspicious of it and frankly changing oils on the Norton,
the Norton A50 that I rode quite a bit. Once I found an oil that was pretty suitable for it,
it did not gas off. It did not quote evaporate. I was consuming less oil by changing the oil that
I was using in my Norton Commando. Okay. Well, I have a photograph here some place showing
one of the great racing teams of the 1950s at the Nürburgring and there is the head of the MV team
with a one gallon tin that has had the side cut off of it. He is preheating oil to be poured into
the race machines because they didn't have the viscosity index and they did not have the
multigrade oil. So the way to deal with cold starting is to turn it into warm starting
with preheated oil. My favorite racing oil of all time. I sought Laguna Seca. It was the
Heinz team and they were without an oil sponsor and so they had bottles of oil that had tape
on the labels and they'd written fast oil apply now. Yes. Well then there was my friend Ron Burns
who's missed the last 25 years who raced two strokes and he was very amused by the constant
parade of new two stroke oils each claiming more power, better fuel economy and longer life.
Smokeless. And so he bought bottles of Marvel mystery oil, the red and black. He poured away
the mystery oil and filled it up with Yukon fluid which was the basis for many of those
two stroke oils back in the late 60s and 1970s and stood them about his pit area when he went
to the races and people would say oh what's that oil you're using there man and he'd say it's a mystery.
He would go in for elaborate self-amusements like that. It was a feature of his personality.
Anyway let's see.
Well it turns out that that synthesis is not the only pathway to the ideal lube oil molecule.
There's also processes of reforming existing molecules and they all depend on catalysts like
ideal molecular shapes with the closely controlled branch chains and the other features that give them
extraordinary viscosity index and resistance to thermal degradation and all the rest of it
but made by not by synthesis but by reforming existing molecules. And of course who was motivated
to make this to travel this path? The established producers of petroleum based oils.
And because here the PAO based stuff is taking bites out of their market.
Let's have a big meeting of chemists and see if we can do this.
Turned out they could. Now they're doing it and this is just something that it's important
to know about that there are mineral originated oils that are of extremely high quality have
competitive viscosity index have competitive resistance to oxidation and all the rest of it.
So where there's a will which often means millions and millions of dollars there's a way.
And the oil industry has never been lacking for R&D funding and so I
I'm somewhat reminded when I think about these chemists people spend their lives doing this
of Charlie Chaplin's movie Modern Times in which he works on a production line he's tightening bolts
ratchet wrench next. And when he goes home at night he can't stop making these motions
and it creates social problems. Well I'm imagining the chemist who spends his days with these mouth
filling descriptions these names chemical names and all of these complicated processes.
And when he gets home he suddenly barks out penta erythritol tetranitrate or 223 trimethyl benzene.
And he's sitting alone on the swing at a party. Yeah he gets like this and explosive outburst
syndrome I think they call it. So I wish those people well when you work in one of those
abstruse fields what do you do for small talk at home at the dinner table watching TV afterwards.
Got to be careful. I loved what you put your problems home. No I loved what you put in the notes
here's a line I love from the handbook of patrolling refining processes edited by Robert A. Myers
on such processes. The most relative class of lube oil molecules is that which contains
Nepentho aromatic groups combination of isodewaxing and hydro finishing completely saturates these
reactive compounds to impart high stability to the base oil. Thank you high five.
Yeah it's party. Do another shot. The great thing about this though is that
I got interested in aviation fuel many years ago and I found some stuff that I could read
about it that was written in a fashion that a person lacking a specialized education could
pretty much get and since then I've tried to sort of pack away at this stuff because I really want
to get some however vague understanding of what goes on in the in the petroleum business and
I think it's quite grand. Of course nobody wants a refinery on next door.
There they are on the Gulf Coast. There they are in New Jersey and other places
but we can't get along without them and even if we go to all electric cars tomorrow
what are we going to do for petroleum derived chemicals. Well we could synthesize them just
like synthesizing polyalpha olfam oil based on it's going to take power. Well when when renewable
sources have become so abundant that there's a vast surplus why would they create a vast surplus
unless they had a buyer lined up. Well you know I do or at least I suspect it's going to take a lot
of organization to make this happen. It's complex party isn't it. But it could happen. The chemists
could make anything you want. Some will cost more than others. Right now mostly comes out of petroleum
so the human plight we're doing things the easy way now. We may have to do it the hard way. We
know how. We just don't have the power right now. But great to think of what a difference between
being unable to start your car because the oil in the cylinder and on the rings in the cylinder
wall has become a solid. Take hold of the crank put your back into it. No movement.
Let's get clever. We pour a little gasoline into each cylinder.
Step by step to the present time my wife loves digital fuel injection because it means
it's 20 below zero. You want to go shopping. You put the key in and turn and the engine starts
and the idle RPM is controlled. There's no fussing with a choke lever or any of that
business. This is very convenient. It's grand. It is. The fuel control alone has changed the
life of your oil. Yes because. As has been ring sealing. I am a combustion chamber snob
from rebuilding old air cooled engines and finally finding the recipe with a Nicosil bore
and a bore plate and a nice piston with a good tight clearance you can get away with because
everything is accurate and having the oil in an air cooled motorcycle dare I say bella set
stay golden honey colored for close to 2000 miles. Whereas in the old days when the cylinder
wasn't round and the piston was round which it isn't supposed to be all of those problems the
oil would be black and 500 miles the less it just all of the all the junk getting past the rings
and then you're using a carburetor a slovenly carburetor spitting God knows you know just
I mean I love carbs don't get me wrong even a cv carburetor I like rich in summer lean in winter
oh go high go low changing you know it's so why there are all those great photographs of
kelker others and others looking at spark plugs through a little magnifier
peering window into combustion to get an understanding of what the mixture is
and whether you've got ideal timing or if you're a little retarded or if you're a little over
it's on there it can tell you the story but we don't need that anymore spark plugs stay in the
engine for the life of the engine practically 100,000 miles easy yeah and they uh these engines
today are ideally managed they don't overheat they uh oil is constantly circulating
their fuel and combustion are being ignition timing are being managed by maps
so a lot of things that used to be covered but well we'll just we'll just jet it a little rich
and it'll be okay now you can't do that anymore because EPA will not let that car be sold until
it passes so it's I did find out that new cars are liars though Kevin I didn't I didn't know this
but as I was doing research I uh about engine temperature gauges and other other things a
a guy I know is a car engineer and he said oh yeah um we run the temperature gauge at normal
in the bottom third all the time unless there's a massive deviation because we don't want to get
all the complaints that it's running hot because it really isn't running hot if you let the gauge
do the job now with sit call it the average consumer whoever that is and it fluctuates people get
panicked so they just hold the needle and then if it gets really bad they say hey you got a problem
take care yeah wonderful and then even some of this well some of the electric
car people don't they'll have a they'll they're they're speaking with the vehicle over the interwebs
right they understand what's happening with the vehicle as you're driving it down the road
and it will throw a code to them but not to you and they'll know that there's a problem with your
vehicle they will not contact you if you contact them and complain then they will take care of it
that is where we are on managing your maintenance costs as a as a manufacturer what are your
warranty costs how much labor are you putting into the vehicle after the sale to make it right
in 1944 the b29 force had been sent to india and it was flying bombs and fuel over the hump
into china so that they could roughly uh seven flights to transport enough tonnage for one mission
against japan and they were having terrible problems with short engine life within flight
fires with engines quitting on takeoff and causing crashes uh the manufacturer right sent a
an engineer frank larry lar y to india to scope this out just uh you know hang around the shops and
see what's happening and so he's looking over all these piles of reports engine temperature is
always in the green so finally he went up to a a crew chief that he'd gotten friendly with
and he said what what is this with always in the green like this we know that the exhaust ports are
ovalizing or they're translating to one side so you've got only one or two points of contact the
valve overheats chunks fall out the jug is jacked off the engine and then the thing catches fire
he said oh we got orders to do that
they don't want uh these units to look like they're deviant so we got a memo that said
forget what the actual temperature is it's not important just write these numbers in
aha here he was wasting all this time reading these after-flight reports
when and he knew that the problems were real because there were piles of wrecked engines
and then he found out that uh the information on the cause was not making it back to the
manufacturer because it would look bad
yeah there was the I think it was a Kawasaki Ninja 900 it was a Kawasaki
and the uh the gauge was sort of running in the middle I guess it was running higher than you
might expect your normal we seem to run them in the bottom third that was you know if it says normal
it's on the O you know it's not on the L L was L seems abnormal that seems on the hot side you
know and uh there was a gauge that was reading high and they were getting a lot of complaints
about it and there was warranty fix and then I don't know that I don't think it was a recall
but the fix was putting a resistor on the wire going to the gauge so that it would read lower
it fixed the problem wonderful sure it is it's great I don't know how that has anything to do
with synthetic oil or well it's like politics you you it's expensive to fix the actual problem
but making people feel better about it is less expensive and how much could the resistor cost
well it's easy to write the check while you're in office if it gets cached or you're you're
projecting that it'll get cached 10 years after you're you're finished all right folks well that
was uh that was great Kevin it was uh it makes you want to go change the oil on my pickup and
put fresh oil on the Vella set because I'm sure that's been in there too long I want to see that
amber colored oil for 2000 miles that's a good it really is well I posted something to aspire to
it is I posted a picture of that to the Vella set group and
one of the guys in the club said that engine has never been in a Vella set or excuse me that oil
has never been in a Vella set engine yes great and uh I had the oh it's because I had the timing
cover off and um you know when you're setting the timing you have to have the timing cover off when
you're doing the automatic timing device and your wedging open the weights though that's
maximum advance and then you're turning the damn thing on the straight on the taper there's no key
because you have to be able to turn it in fine increments and then tap it on and tighten your
nut and then did it slip or didn't it slip and you recheck it again so you have the timing cover
off to do all this and of course all you could see in all the little looks and topographies of the
african continent as they say about the timing cover of the Vella set was all this golden hues and
then the the aluminum is just as clean as can be because it was immaculate immaculately cleaned
the last of many times I've done a rebuild on it which has been together for a long time now
but there it was and he said well that's not that oil's never never been in a Vella set this golden
hue it's great it's just so it's so nice when you you know as we have discussed many times
is that you hammer the problem and you try to figure out what it is and you keep working and
you get a result that you desired as Kevin has put in the past with me many times he calls it
getting what you came for yes so it's uh it's getting what you came for well thanks for listening
folks we uh we always enjoy our time together with you um thank you Kevin yet again for another
ding don battle with interesting vocabulary it makes me want to do a vocabulary episode
and we can just start with disparities capital A I didn't mention this
excrescences once nope well we'll start with a and we'll go to z and we'll we'll try to do a
motorsports related vocabulary one of these times there it'd be a worthy uh a worthy hour
thanks for listening all righty
About this episode
Engine lubrication comes down to keeping moving parts separated with thin oil films, where viscosity is the key property that resists sliding and supports the load. The hosts connect viscosity to temperature—oils thin when hot and thicken during cold starts—then explain how wedge formation in bearings and oil cooling help manage heat. They walk through why multi-grade oils, viscosity index, and VI improvers matter, and how synthetic base oils like PAO differ from conventional oils in chemistry, oxidation resistance, and additive behavior.
Find us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/cw/CycleWorldPodcast
Oil seems to be endlessly fascinating to gearheads, so Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer get back into the advantages of synthetic and conventional oils, how engines are lubricated and cooled, and a whole lot more. Learn about "the wedge" and maybe that modern vehicles are "liars"?
