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Yeah I'm convinced now that my procedure was wrong. However, could the level be wrong by a whole quart? I guess it's possible that a quart went down the engine, hence the requirement to do oil check after a good warmup of the engine
Question - if I have overfilled it, how should I "remove" the extra oil? I'm inclined to syphon it out somehow. Last time I changed it was spring 2023, about 2k miles ago, so maybe time for complete oil change?
Turkey baster or a cheap transfer pump from Harbor Freight. I would check it hot first just to make sure as much oil is out of the crankcase as possible.
When I overfilled the oil tank on my Iron 883, I bought a plastic hand syphon pump from my local pet shop to remove the excess oil from the tank, these are made for emptying fish tanks, it only cost me Ł3.00. I've also used mine for emptying the fuel tank, it works a treat.
"NOTE: The motorcycle should be upright and level when checking oil level."
It's pretty awkward trying to hold the bike upright, pull, and look at the dipstick. At least doing it by yourself, when I tried the factory method. I just factor in the bit of lean over on the kickstand, which should make the oil level just slightly lower on the stick than if held upright. As long as you're between the marks, you should be fine. I run my oil on low side, rather than topped up to the upper mark. That's also supposed to lessen oil discharge from the breathers, but IMO the jury is still out on that one.
John
Motorcycle engines do burn oil, it is a natural part of the internal combustion process, one pint every 250 to 300 miles is perfectly normal, excessive oil burning could be due to worn valve stem seals or worn piston rings. Mineral oil will burn more quickly than synthetic oil.
One pint every 250 to 300 miles is perfectly normal,
I have never encountered a motor that used one pint in 250-300 miles. Unless it was my two stroke RM250 or RD400, and I don't think even they used that much I just put 3000 miles on my 24 year old truck (with 240,000 miles) in two weeks and used less than one pint in total. And that's with Castrol 5W-30 High Mileage semi-synthetic.
Where did you find this information? Not saying you're incorrect, but I have never had a vehicle that used anywhere near that much, even my leaky old VWs.
John
Last edited by John Harper; Aug 7, 2024 at 08:19 AM.
I have never encountered a motor that used one pint in 250-300 miles. Unless it was my two stroke RM250 or RD400, and I don't think even they used that much I just put 3000 miles on my 24 year old truck (with 240,000 miles) in two weeks and used less than one pint in total.
Where did you find this information? Not saying you're incorrect, but I have never had a vehicle that used anywhere near that much, even my leaky old VWs.
John
Sorry, John, I should have added a zero to the end of those figures, I have been busy today sorting out my eBay orders and my mind was thinking about fasteners when I was typing that post, as a male, I'm not too good at multi-tasking.
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