What are the thoughts in additives to the fuel or even oil for cleaning the engine? I've got the large service coming next month for my Multi 1260 and the oil currently in it is pretty old but I'd rather they see old oil than new for inspection. However, once the bike comes back, I'd like to do several oil flushes, during this, is there any additives I can add to help clean out old shitty oil tha may be built up? Thanks!
Many of the commonly available, over the counter oil flush products, are added to the dirty oil and run for 15 or 20 minutes under no load prior to the oil change. Modern fully synthetic oils (except Motul 300V to an extent) have blends of detergents to minimise the build up of deposits between oil changes. If you are really concerned that you have a problem, I’d look at doing a couple of flush and oil and filter changes with a less expensive oil (like Halfords own brand) over a period of 3000 or 4000 miles. Longer term, use a good quality brand that majors on detergents like Motul 7100. Andy
Just my opinion, but 1. Modern synthetic oils with high detergent levels just don’t build up the sludge like old oils did, so not so likely that there is a lot of anything nasty lurking in the oilways. but 2. If it does happen to have a lot of oil sludge sitting around because poor quality oils have been used during the bike’s history, I’m not convinced that flushing them through the main bearings and big ends to the sump for the filter to catch them is ideal. 3. Why not ask the dealer to retain you a pot of the old oil from the service, then you can send it off for analysis and see if you actually need any additives
I know the bike has been treated well, I wasn't aware modern oils were so engine friendly in this sense. Good to know, thanks mate. Given this, I'll simply do a couple of oil services after the work as you said, once perk few K. Point three is a brilliant idea, send it off to get analysed. Thanks! Just to add to the thread, nothing is wrong with the bike, it's at 32k (km) right now and runs brilliantly. The problem is, I love this bike and I'm starting to think long term, how to prevent as much going wrong as possible.
I just had my 916 engine open. 20K miles. Zero oil sludge, clean as a whistle. I have a couple of 50s bikes and in those I run old fashioned oil without detergent and dispersant and they will have a build up of sludge after a few thousand miles. It's wanted in those engines as the filtration is poor and the sludge traps debris at the bottom of the sump rather than it going round and round the engine. With the filtration we have in modern engines you can run copious amounts of detergents and dispersants which do keep your engine clean and the filter keeps the muck out.
