Has anyone come across Kawasaki's own 2T oils? It is amazing what you come across on the shop shelves. I went into get new chains for the chainsaws and other parts and I was about to pay my bill when I looked at the oil on the shelf. Sitting pretty was one very good brand Opti2
http://opti2-4.com/html/opti-2.html in 1 & 4 litre packs that legendary riders such as Helmut "Speedy" Clasen swears by. I then saw two Pint size (473ml) bottles of Kawachem 2 Stroke Motorcycle racing oil that I have never heard of before but in the older style packaging.
http://www.kawasaki.com/KawasakiNew/Accessories2/PCItemDetail.aspx?ItemNumber=K61020022B&Reason=6&intCatalogID=1&intCatalogType=23&ProductTypeID=150&CategoryId=49It even makes reference to the suitability for the older KX/KDX models on their website. Anyway I asked the shop owner about this as it is for motorcycles and how he came by it and he said, "Oh it was sent to us by mistake with all the other Kawasaki powered mowers and KAAZ blowers we sell" and has been sitting on the shelf for ages. I said, "But it is for MOTORCYCLES, you dont race lawn mowers......I have a motorcycle!". "Oh you have a motorcycle then just take it, dont worry about it, you buy lots of stuff from us, I hate seeing it sitting on the shelf taking up space". So I ended up with these 2 bottles of oil that are made in the USA for Kawasaki Power products that had a price tag of $11.90 a bottle. Try getting a freebee like that from your local cycle shack!
Ji, the biggest problem with articles written in magazines about lube products or any products is that in the majority of cases they are simply advertisements for a brand of product masqerading as a technical or informative article for the particular audience of the publication. In this regard then all you have is just corporate marketing and company policy that has been handed down the generations of employees who have simply listened to their predecesssor and never investigated the subject themselves. The authors of these articles are merely regional distributors for a certain brand. I have seen this with even product reviews for motorcycle tyres, exhaust systems and suspension parts where the reviews are never going to find fault with the product, and the contents of the article have already been pre written and pre approved by the supplier and then gaps filled in by the technical editor of the magazine (if one exists). As you have found out riders cannot rely on motorcycle magazines or newspapers (ie: Cycle Torque that is a very good free publication) for their technical advice and education, as they are clearly biased towards advertising.
Also thanks for the headsup on your recent run with 25:1.
The Silkolene brand has been bought up a few times in this thread, and questions asked about it, and I was waiting till I got all the answers to my questions from my contacts at this company. Silkolene have marketed their 1st class products in Australia since about 1983 and their PRO-4 4T oil back in 1984-86 was recommended extensively to solve the lubrication/overheating/oil loss issues associated with the XR250RE and other RFVC engines at the time. I recall buying 4 litre packs of PRO4 ($50 back then was huge amount of money for oil, esp when my wages back then were $200 a week) (as well as Castrol GPS) specified by Honda back then where other riders running standard Castrol Grand Prix 20W/50 (Increased from 20W/40 in 1983) were running out of oil while in the dirt due to the high volatility of the mineral oil used in GP and its equivalents.(It evaporated out of the sump when subjected to the extreme heat created in these engines) . Other 4T oils suffered viscosity shear when the VI improver broke down and you had rattly lifters and breakdown of oil flim on most engine parts. This was compounded by riders putting in car oils into their bikes.
One fella who was parked near my car in the pits the other weekend had one of these problem bikes and I saw him waving a pack of Castrol Magnatec 10W/40 around and I noticed just as he finished topping up his bike with this oil. I said to him that you need a 20W/50 grade for these and that oil will shear down and is too thin for those hot running engines, "Oh well this is what I had sitting around". I just thought that i was glad it wasnt my bike and went back on preparing my own machine.
So back to 2T oils, especially the Silkolene grades this time round, and over the last 25 years they have come, then gone then come back in recent years when Fuchs from Germany bought them out. From what I have seen with their merchandising and dealer support it is a woeful effort and the brand really needs to be managed by a dedicated motorcycle parts distributor who understands the motorcycle market and the rider.
They have 3 grades of 2T available, PRO-2SX SAE 30 100% Ester(Motul 800 equivalent), Comp 2 Plus a lighter 100% Ester and Comp 2 Premix (a heavy SAE40 part synthetic).
One of their selling points is "Electrosyntec Technology" that is splashed all over their data sheets and packaging. This may sound impressive to the guy who fronts up to the shelves with many brands on offer and sees this and it is like the pack jerking off at him persuading him to lift a pack of PRO2SX off the rack instead of something else. But what does this really mean and is it something that is specific to the Silkolene brand. Well it isnt really, Polyol-Esters (POE's) or lets just refer to them as Esters are the "New Age" Castor oils with regards to film strength. I mean full marks to Silkolene for alerting the rider about the virtues of Ester oils, where most others havent, but it needs to be explained clearer to the rider and not used solely as a "Unique Selling Proposition". Clever selling tool!! but how about educating the poor punter why this is so and how it benefits his motorcycle.
How many of you actually go through the trouble to obtain a Technical data sheet on the oil you are using or about to use? Perhaps your "authority" is simply what your pal is using or what has been used in the Winners Circle.
Some research was conducted in around 82' in using plain Vegetable or Canola oil as a 2T lubricant. It mixed with fuel well like castor oil did, lubricated reasonably well but oxidised in the engine and created greater deposits.............I recall the author saying that the exhaust fumes created an atmosphere the same as a Fish and Chip Shop.
Castor oil, Canola Oil or any vegetable oil is a referred to as a Natural Ester. But what works best these days are the synthetically refined Esters used in modern Ester 2T motor oils. And this is what Silkolene have cleverly campaigned and betted on to differentiate themselves from the rest of the crowd. The PRO2SX data sheet says "It is formulated using ester synthetic components which provide the exceptional anti-seize properties usually associated only with castor-based oils". It goes on and says, "Some oils can only achieve race performance at the expense of long-term engine cleanliness (Hinting at castor oil here!), but PRO 2 SX is particularly resistant to ring-sticking and plug fouling problems" "Electrosyntec uses electrostatic forces to bond low friction molecules to stressed metal surfaces, releasing hidden power and ensuring long-term performance retention". Bloody hell, "Hidden Power"........I wonder what else is hiding in the dark smelly recesses of my 2 smoker! The data sheet also states, "Do not mix with Conventional Oils"...........Well what the hell is a conventional oil these days?.........maybe if you are old enough it may mean some 70's mineral/bright stock formulation, but today the rider under 40 would not be able to interpret that ........Sometimes these tech sheets are written by fresh female University graduates in my experience!............
So is this the door slowly closing for Castor oils? Is the market for castor oils really only governed & supported by the Die Hards in the market like the Lozza's and other engine builders/racers (who follow results from the 60's/70's) who perhaps need to try a bottle of Motul 800, Silkolene Pro2SX, Bel-Ray H1R etc.......and run some tests. Is the Castor/Synthetics out there (A747, 927) a ploy to wean the diehards slowly away over time..........has the % of castor been slowly diluted with more Ester until it is all gone in the formulation? Let me tell you the oil companies and blenders hate dealing with Castor suppliers as they are not oil or additive suppliers but commodity traders (who deal in vegetable, corn, sunflower, cotton and other edible oils) with sometimes dubiuos raw material sources and quality control. Look at the substitution rackets with Olive oil for example.
I did eventually get some quite reasonable explanations from Silkolene of their claims which echoes some of my own descriptions of Castor oil a little while ago :
"The made-up word ‘Electrosyntec’ was coined to describe the electrostatic effect which causes polar molecules to be attracted to metal surfaces. (We see electrostatic attraction, such as sticking balloons to the wall, as weak effect, but at the ‘nano’ level it is surprisingly strong due to the inverse square law.) Even in the 18th and 19th centuries clockmakers and engineers realised that some oils were more ‘slippery’ than others, but the cause of this at a molecular level was only really sorted out by Frank Bowden and his collaborators working at Melbourne University in the 1940s and early 1950s. See:
http://www-pcs.phy.cam.ac.uk/fsp/PCSlaboratory.pdfA particular type of molecule is very good at attaching itself to metal: A high molecular weight ester. Some esters, such as vegetable oils*, are ‘natural’ some are synthetic, but they all do it, to a greater or lesser extent; and they do not stop at one layer. (See attachments.) * Castor oil is the best!" (End of quote)
So Esters are really the future here, I still have my reservations about the "overuse" of PIB in formulations and would be disturbed if the % of Ester was cut back with PIB.
So when you see that word Ester staring at you on the pack of oil it has not been put there for nothing, it is too alert the rider of a very high quality formulation and this is what you are paying for.
