oil in small engine

[Poppy]

how do you check the oil level in your engine?
My lawn mower has a dip stick that has threads that are about 3/8 inch deep.
Do I dip the stick until I hit the top of the threads, and use that as a measurement?
OR...
Do I dip the stick, and screw it in and use that as a measurement?

The owner's manual doesn't comment, it only shows where the full mark is on the stick.

 

[ledbetter]

I always threaded it down to measure.

 

[bykfixer]

Me too.

 

[raggie33]

on my motor bikes you did not screw it in

 

[Poppy]

The engine in my lawnmower is from the 1980's. It smokes until it heats up, and runs fine, but later if it gets too hot, it starts to smoke again. I gave it an oil change with synthetic, high mileage, and added some engine restore, and it seemed to be worse.

I checked the oil level and it was too high, and then, once again, what is the proper method of checking it.

Perhaps it is different for different engines, but I found a engine specific owner's manual:

For this engine, a Honda GXV270, like raggie's bikes, you do NOT screw it in.
One would think that info would be in the owner's manual that came with the machine.

 

[raggie33]

lol one of my motorcyles had a sight glass to check oil level lol the bike had to be level to use it but you had to be on it to make it level a course you couldnt see sight glass while on it. i fianly had to by a mirror on a stick to check level

 

[bykfixer]

Read the Instructions? Why?

Nah, seriously if your nearby auto parts store still carries the stuff try STP oil treatment. Just add a teaspoon or so to the oil.
See, in the days prior to pollution laws motor oil had zinc in it. Lots of it. Trouble was it clogs catalytic convertors.

I had a Prelude that had a nice motor but Honda engineers had gone the way of the Chevy Vega and the super tough piston rings murdered alluminum cylinder walls. It smoked like crazy at first but stopped when warm until the day they'd just break. Usually due to metal shavings clogging crankshaft bearing journals. Most made it to 150k miles or so before breaking. If they were stick shift usually less but since the auto tranny shifted at lower rpms those tended to last longer. The ole B21.

On mine I'd add a can of STP oil treatment to the crank case at oil change time and run it through the motor for 20 minutes or so then dump the oil. It stopped the motor from smoking by coating the cylinder walls with zinc but did not clog the cat. When I sold the car with 275k on the odometer it did not smoke at all.

Zinc won't make that old worn out piston ring or valve guides new again, but it will probably reduce your oil burning.

 

[orbital]

+

Burning a bit of oil is not the end of the world,, oil has energy, so you get a little more bang for the buck.
also, it's lubing the cylinder wall.

Maybe go one higher on the gas octane & then do air/fuel tune, just a thought.

Fun fact: current F1 cars effectively burn 2-stroke gas, but the amount of oil burned is super regulated,,
how is it regulated, I really don't know ⁉️

 

[orbital]

+

Double post deal::

Other than my car, which gets Mobil1, I use diesel oil in everything because of the extra zinc in it.
Rotella T6 to be specific.

 

[Poppy]

Last year I added a couple of ounces of "Restore". It supposedly fills in little scratches in the cylinder walls. It seemed to make a difference.

I don't know what oil was in the machine, and although I usually would have changed it shortly after I got it, I didn't.

I recently changed the oil. The old stuff was pretty black. I used 10-40 high mileage, synthetic blend, and a couple of ounces of "Restore". Apparently, I put too much oil in. Yesterday, I drained out a couple of ounces of oil, it is still a little high, but not too much. Now that I know how to use the dip stick,

I am looking forward to next week's mowing session to see how it does.

 

[BVH]

In my past working life, I worked on dozens of brands of small engines and the vast majority of them did not require the dipstick be screwed in to get the proper reading. I actually can't recall one that did.

 

[bykfixer]

I guess I had been doing it wrong all those years.

Luckily my current mower has a dip stick.

 

[Poppy]

So, I reviewed the owner's manual to see what oil they recommend. There is a couple of paragraphs and a temperature graph, and oil specs. I know that I read that. Yet, I must have skipped over, how to use the dip-stick. LOL... who needs to read directions on how to use a dip-stick?

I guess I do!

Right there in plain sight it says... insert the dip stick but do not screw it in!
duh

 

[orbital]

So, I reviewed the owner's manual to see what oil they recommend. There is a couple of paragraphs and a temperature graph, and oil specs. I know that I read that. Yet, I must have skipped over, how to use the dip-stick. LOL... who needs to read directions on how to use a dip-stick?

I guess I do!

Right there in plain sight it says... insert the dip stick but do not screw it in!
duh

+

For sure Poppy, for such a small thing, either you are overfilled or under.

don't lose the manual

 

[bykfixer]

I had a neighbor who was a very active widow but we noticed she seemed to be slipping at times. She used a battery start lawnmower and each year would buy a new one because the battery was dead each spring. We tried to show her what to do but she had more loot than sense.

One day her mower was spitting and sputtering and smoking. Knowing her mower was no more than a few weeks old I asked to check it over. There was motor oil dripping out of the muffler. It had a long dipstick tube, which was nearly full. She kept insisting the tube was supposed to be full.

I dumped the oil, replaced the oil saturated air filter and refilled to the correct level. It ran fine. Next week same thing, spitting and sputtering and smoking again. I just sat back and watched after that. Next week she bought another mower because "the oil in hers was too dark"……

Soon after she hired a lawn care outfit to cut her grass. Not long after that her nephew had her placed in a nursing home. The woman was as crazy as an outhouse rat in her good years so it was hard to know the difference between the quirks or the dimensia setting in until a day she had to be brought home because she had forgotten where she lived (again).

 

[Poppy]

+

Fun fact: current F1 cars effectively burn 2-stroke gas, but the amount of oil burned is super regulated,,
how is it regulated, I really don't know ⁉️

My brother has a 2 stroke, 200 HP Johnson outboard motor. I believe it is a 6 cylinder. It has a one gallon oil reservoir. It has a single pump that pumps both the fuel, and the oil. The engine is computer controlled, and he was getting low oil messages and had to replace the pump.

Looking up specs for the engine, its fuel - oil ratio was 50 to 1. So it would burn a gallon of oil for each 50 gallons of fuel. Running flat out it'll burn about 20 gallons of fuel an hour.

 

[raggie33]

u sure poppy? thats a lot of gas in a hour for only 200 hp a vette only uses 3 or so gallons per hour

 

[Poppy]

Yes raggie. In cars, you measure fuel consumption in miles per gallon. In boats, its gallons an hour.

<SNIP>
To determine an average fuel usage at gallons per hour (gph), divide horsepower by 10. Therefore, a boater with a four-stroke, 250-hp marine outboard engine running at full throttle, or about 6,100 rpm, is using 25 gph.

But, an engine is most efficient at 75 to 80 percent of rated output rather than at full throttle. The same boater reports that throttling back to 77.5 percent of rated output, or 4,728 rpm, consumes only 12.5 gph, for a 50 percent fuel savings.<END SNIP>

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[Chauncey Gardiner]

Fuel consumption ......



^ That's the amount for just one cylinder.

 

[orbital]

+

We're so goofy, from a small lawnmower engine burning a bit of oil, to Top Fuel jobberoos.

Caught myself watching a NHRA competing a while back,
the superchargers used to make the 11,000hp use 2,000hp in the process to do that.

Wrap your head around that one...