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how much engine oil !

4K views 54 replies 10 participants last post by  199579 
#1 ·
I have done 1650 miles on my 990 2012 super duke r in the 2 months since buying it but noticing it has a thirst for oil ! its doing 400 miles to 350ml of oil ! now that seems excessive to me so i took it back to the dealer i bought it from as it is under warranty and they are telling me i am OVER filling it as i am not checking the oil correctly ! in the manual it says get engine fully warmed up or after a ride and stand it up level as in a paddock stand i use, leave it for 5 mins after switching off then check the level on the clear pipe on the side of the oil tank or thats how i have been doing it and did the same on my 950 sm for the 2 years i had that aswell, dealer says NO NO NO start the engine and as long as there is oil in the clear pipe thats it plenty of oil !!! ? so they said after the engine stops oil drains into the engine so checking the oil level on the clear pipe will always show its low and when i top it up to the max mark i am over filling it ! doesnt sound right to me, they have also said there is a scavage valve/1 way valve in the oil pump somewhere and if this is not working oil will drain back into the engine when engine is turned off so they are talking about replacing that.
Im not convinced because i have put about 3lt of oil in this bike in 1600 miles and if i had over filled it by 3lt im sure i would of seen it piss out all over the place but no oil leaks anywhere, motor runs mint sounds mint and i cannot see or smell burning oil ! any thoughts more than welcome.
 
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#2 ·
An engine can burn a fair amount of oil without any signs of smoke.

FWIW.. my 990 doesn't require any oil between services, which is usually only about 2-3k miles.

However mine is a PITA to judge oil level. If I set it to normal height as per the manual (when it's hot but sat for a while) then it would be very high when the engine is running, like right at the top of the sight tube.

But these are dry sump engines, as long as there is oil in the tank then the engine is good, the actual level is not that important. The tank level can vary a lot in use as there is a delay between oil supply and oil return, so running briefly at high revs can drain the tank initially. I don't believe the non return valve is leaking as on these bikes it is one hell of a non return valve.

What I tend to do now is to check it when I stop at traffic lights, as long as it's half way up the tube (or more) then I'm happy.
 
#3 ·
When l do an oil change, l put in a litre, spin it over without starting, then top up to about a 1/4 on sight tube (or dip stick on adv) ........ when its properly warm, its then showing almost full. Every LC8 l have had has used a bit between oil changes, but nothing that has caused me concern.
 
#5 ·
bikes only done 9500 miles so putting in over 2.5lt in the 1600mile iv done since buying the bike seemed a bit heavy as my 950sm proberly used 100ml every 1000 mile if that, dealer has asked my to keep an eye on it and take pics for him before i refill it but as you say as long as there is oil in the tank alls good.
 
#9 ·
I reckon 100ml of oil to 12.6 litres of petrol is a 126:1 mix ratio (based on 36 mpg).
I think a 4T could easily burn that amount without visible smoke. I was on one ride where my mate ran out of fuel and was forced to run premix in his XR400, and that didn't smoke even though it was using a 40:1 mix (or something like that).

@conair I think your bike is likely burning that oil.
What now... is your warranty still valid?
 
#11 ·
iv only had the bike since end of Feb have 2 year warranty on it, dealer says im over filling it ! if i was im sure by now it would be pissing oil out everywhere with the amount of oil i have put in since Feb ! but he said he is going to order a scavage non return valve or something apparantly it stops oil draining into the engine when the motor is switched off its, bike has full akra system and if anything runs a tad rich black soot at the end of the cans but bike runs mint. never had a bike that uses so much oil and you cannot see/smell it burning. oil my FJ1200 used about a quarter of the oil this does but that had worn valve stem seals and only smoked and smelt when cold started for 30secs but it stunk of burning oil this doesnt and there is no oil on the number plate/cans/rear end of the bike. or is the lack of smell down to fully sinthetic oil ! i dont know.
 
#13 ·
Or. Dump the oil, put in some cheapo mineral, rag it for a 100 miles to try and bed the rings, then back to normal oil.

Running in on cheapo mineral and getting the rings bedded - on and off the throttle - tried and tested.

KTM used to use a motorex running in oil up until the 600 m service, dont know if they still do.
 
#16 ·
Maybe it's going to take a process of getting the garage to drain it (leave the filters alone).. measure what comes out, fill it again with this known amount (ignore the sight glass), run for some miles then drain and measure the amount left.

If it's using 100ml in 100 miles then doing a few hundred (maybe even 500) should be a nicely measurable amount of oil loss that can't simply be put down to spill losses whilst draining the oil.
 
#20 ·
Air filter is a Rotweiler jobby so just oil soaked foam filter all pristine and clean as the bike had the big service when i bought it including valves aswell, after doing a week to/from work its back to min again so thats another 2-300ml to refill to max mark lol im going to rename the bike the Torry Canyon !
 
#24 ·
just got back from a good spanking to whitby and back heres a couple of pics and this looks fine after a good spanking !
Whats more concerning is a did 209 miles since last topping the oil up last weekend and just put 400ml of oil in sheeesh nearly half a ltr per 200 miles lmao
Automotive tire Automotive exhaust Yellow Motor vehicle Cylinder
Automotive tire Automotive lighting Bumper Finger Automotive exhaust
 
#27 ·
A mate bought a 990SMT from a bike shop, they’d serviced it with generic 10-40 motorcycle oil, he was using a litre a week. We swapped it onto 10-60 Motorex and it settled right down. My 20k 950 SMR was the same, now on the correct oil uses hardly any.
 
#48 · (Edited)
Long-winded answer but bear with me..
I had an SMT. The dealer I bought it from serviced it beforehand and used 10-40. It was using about 1 litre every 750 miles. Took it to a local indie KTM specialist (Woolsbridge Motorcycles - now sadly no more - formally Sideways KTM) and they said firstly it has to be 10-50 or 10-60 and if the bike had been molly-coddled after run-in (it was a one owner bike with 7500 miles on it when I bought it) it was likely to have glazed bores which would increase oil consumption.
He recommended Castrol 1 Racing 10-50 and giving the engine a proper workout without abusing it. Immediately my oil consumption halved and further improved gradually until I sold it 10,000 miles later, which seems to bear out what he said. It never smoked or had the faintest whiff of burning oil.

Then, when I bought my 1290, I got talking to a mechanic at the main dealer where I bought it (one of the good ones) and he told me that KTM used oil jets to cool the piston skirts on the 990 engines which produced a high level of oil evaporation. It was a carry-over from their days of building purely competition engines where no one much cared about designed-in oil consumption as long as the engine was healthy and produced the desired performance. It seemed not to have occurred to KTM that road riders would be alarmed by such oil usage, and he said he thought they changed the design of the pistons on the later bikes after too many complaints from customers. I don't have any other corroboration for this, but I do remember reading an article about oils in one of the bike mags some time later where a technician from Motorex was interviewed and he said that all KTM V-twins, including the 1190 and 1290, tended to evaporate engine oil and it was therefore imperative that owners should use the correct oil (Motorex, of course...) that used anti-evaporation additives. Failure to do so would result in oil consumption.
Again, that seems to back up what the mechanic said.

I once had a service done on my 1190 by an independent who used an oil unfamiliar to me (it was fully synth etc) and it did start using oil afterwards. When I went back to Motorex at the next service, that usage stopped.

Going back to my SMT, I also fitted an after-market airbox (a DNA stage 3) and when fitting I noticed a small puddle of oil in the air box around the crank breather pipe, so when I fitted the DNA, I blanked the breather hole, and vented the pipe to the atmosphere capped off with a K&N breather filter. I left the check valve in place and kept the pipe as long and as vertical as possible and tied to a frame rail just behind the headstock. My thinking being that any oil vapour forced out of the breather would condense and drain back down to the crankcase instead of getting burned through the throttle bodies. Don't know how much difference that really made but no oil ever made it's way out of the top of the breather pipe.

I would say to the OP, try using Motorex 10-50 or 10-60 and give the engine some good hard free-revving use and monitor the situation. He'll probably find that it gradually improves.
 
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