John and Dave: I appreciated reading about your long distance adventure on the list and all of your trials along the way. It seems that no long distance event is without them. They make for good stories afterwards (I also heard they put hair on your chest). ;-)
I recently was the Rallymaster for a Saddle Sore event (1000 miles in 24 hours) for our BMW club. A 1000 mile day didn't seem like quite enough, so I added a club function around the ride which hopefully gave it a lighter, more playful atmosphere. Aside from the usual checkpoints, riders were given the opportunity to pick up bonus points for silly things like highest score of 3 bowling balls, putting closest to the pin, picking up tidbits of information along the route and of course my favourite; fastest pie eating contest with timing and Polaroid pictures compliments of the staff of a small town pub. Anyway, to make it even more challenging (for me) I also rode the event. Let me say, that I love my GTS and have it fairly well set-up for longer trips, although I do not have a fuel cell or GPS yet and still ride on the stock seat. OUCH! I do have PIAA driving lights, Givi bags, a throttle lock, heated grips and vest, an MRA windscreen, K&N airflters, and a Scottoiler with dual injector tips. I had gone over the bike with a fine tooth comb before I left and had changed oil and filter switching to Yamalube 20W-40 from synthetic. I have been watching the list carefully trying almost everything possible to reduce my oil consumption which is excessive. After breaking in my bike on dino oil, I switched to Castrol Syntec 5w-50 and ran that without noticeable consumption for the first 20,000 kms. After starting to burn a little more oil on trips I switched to Mobil 1 15W-40, but then it got much worse. I was now burning almost a liter every 1000 kms. So I tried switching to Pennzoil 20W-50 for a while but it never got any better. I read something about diesel engine oil having high levels of detergents and being able to "de-gum sticky parts" and though maybe that would help, but it didn't. So now with about 45,000 kms on my GTS I decided to go back to Yamalube. Unfortunately it didn't work any better. By my second checkpoint (about 400 kms) I needed oil. My speeds were fairly high, for the most part running between 130-190 kms/hr. Unfortunately when I added the oil I was side tracked by a rider and I forgot to put my oil filler cap (black plastic with raised flat thumb tab) back in. It was about 15 kms down the road after that when my oil light came on and I reached down with my right hand to check that the cap was on and brought my hand back up to find it covered with oil, along with my boot and the right lower side of the bike. Needless to say the rear braking was somewhat diminished also. After thoroughly cleaning the oil off the crankcase around the filler hole with a rag dipped in gasoline, I successfully used good old duct tape to seal it up. Upon my arrival back to the gas station where I had added oil less than 1/2 an hour ago, the cap was spotted by a fellow biker less than five minute prior, but was no longer anywhere to be found (including all garbage cans and complete shake-downs of attendants). I proceeded to use duct tape to get me to a Home Hardware store where I lucked out with a boat hole repair plug. This plug is like a wine bottle plug with a metal handle that flips over and expands a rubber plug. It works so well I'm still using it today. Anyway, my point is, that I have made three long distance trips already this year, and one was in cooler temperatures (I rode through BC in the same snow storm as Dave and John). I did not notice my oil consumption go down noticeably on the cooler ride. Each time I open my airbox I notice there is some oil in there and I am wondering if it's getting up there from a faulty crankcase ventilation valve. I don't know how or where the crankcase vents but will be checking it out the next time I have the bike apart. Does anyone have any information regarding this on the GTS? I'll be listening carefully regarding Rick's engine rebuild and Dave's oil cooler to hear the results. Other wise I may just have to put an R1 engine in it with a BMW shaft drive while I'm at it. ;-) GWN Daren <<snip>> REPOST FROM GTS LIST to FJR List....... One of my concerns is that the FJR is not an oil consumer like most GTS1000 engines have proven to be. I can burn a half of a quart in as little as 500 miles when running at sustained high speeds....especially on hot days. On the topic of GTS oil consumption, an interesting realization that both Dave Biasotti reached during the Mexico -Alaska Rally. The GTS appears to have too small an oil cooler, allowing the oil to heat up too much and reduce it's viscosity. It is probably the root of the GTS's oil consumption problem. We both experience greatly reduced oil consumption when running at cooler ambient temperatures during the Rally. Enough so that we both commented about when we had a chance to talk after the Rally. Dave is looking into a larger after market oil cooler to address the problem. I am sure Dave will post his findings. hawke
