been using my bike everyday over the last few weeks, i leave in the dark and come home in the dark and it's got shitty as hell so thought i'd give it a wash down this morning and check it over etc. I've had it running up to temperature but the in the sight glass and filler cap this is all i get. now with my history of jumping up and down at ducati and the dealer over something that ended up being my own fault, what do you guys think?
How long a journeys have you been doing? Enough to get up to temp when riding? It might be worth dropping the oil and putting some new in just to make sure there's no moisture in there?
Don't know about Ducati's, but I've experienced that on all my bikes at one point or another. Always been due to frequent short mileage journeys during winter. My mechanic recommended changing the oil every 2k miles to counter it.
I've heard as long as you can get it up to and above 85degrees that should help with the evaporation of the moisture? Maybe try getting a longer run in so the engine gets nice and hot, bit of a mission in this weather though!
Back in the day I used to tape/cover up the oil cooler on my old GS650 Katana in the winter. This meant the bike warmed up quicker and oil was not emulsified as the moisture was driven off.
I've also heard tale or removing the filler cap when getting home to let the moisture out. Just make sure not to ride off the next day without replacing it!
Our bikes all seem to run cool on an open road. We don't know the difference cactus temperature of the oil but we do know the coolant temperature and the two are unlikely to be wildly adrift. The boiling temperature of water is of course 100c and imho, it is no coincidence that the fans are set to come on slightly over that. This would allow the motor to reach 100c without exceeding by too much, reaching 100c will boil any water out of the oil without doing any harm to oil, engine or coolant system. However, if your commute doesn't involve slow traffic, your oil will never get hot enough for moisture to be driven out, hence the mayonnaise. For some reason, Ducati specify thermostats which open around 60c, so its no wonder the engines run cool. What we don't know is if the ecu is still delivering a rich mixture st this temperature. If it is, fuel economy and performance are not exactly going to be enhanced. Also, it has been suggested that fuel may be running down the cylinder bores, maybe contaminating the oil. Could this be why some Ducatis lunch their main bearings?? One of my winter jobs this year is to try and source a replacement thermostat that opens at something like 85c...
At higher altitudes water boils at lower temperatures. Get rid of that oil & stick fresh in with a new filter, £60? if you do it yourself. But maybe pop around to the dealer to show them that milky oil before hand.
Seeing as the Ducati's are known to boil your bollocks in the warmer months I'm guessing that's the reason for the fans to kick in earlier perhaps?
I've got the oil and filter here anyway as the dealer filled her with same spec but cheaper oil at the last service and i was going to put shell advance in. sod's law I don't have a 12mm allen key at home so i'll pick one up from work in the morning. all drop the oil and report back on here. i'm pretty sure it's just condensation, but i've never seen it that bad on a bike before. as people have already mentioned, i only do about 12 miles each way and in these conditions on the roads i use it rarely gets over 50mph so it's not getting a chance to clear
I have a multi 1000 and my first Ducati. When I first saw whiteness in my oil window I did have a little wtf moment. Then at the belt service I mentioned this to the specialist and he said yep, I bet you do a lot of short journeys? Sure enough I do but the same journeys I did with the blackbird before it. I did some digging and this is not an unknown Ducati issue. It's a mixture of riding the bike before it is up to temperature and short journeys. What I do now is when I get back, I centre stand the bike, take the oil filler cap off and put it on a piece of kitchen roll on the seat so I don't ride off without it. This seems to work and leaves only the finest of lines of white. I'm sure if I waited till it cooled down and then pushed a bit of kitchen roll in the oil filler hole it would remove the remaining damp. I am toying with partially/fully blanking off the oil cooler to help the bike in these colder months, to get upto temperature quicker. I do not see it as an issue but more like an annoying quirk, just like the fuel gauge
Earlier? The fans kick in on my 999 at 101c for the first one and if the temp continues to rise, the second kicks in at 103c. Due to the combination of pressurisation of the cooling system and the 50/50 ethylene glycol and water coolant mix, the coolant won't boil until just short of 130c and fully synthetic oil is fine at that temperature, so rising to 110 or 120c should do no real harm, although when you are used to seeing 70 or so, it can be hard to suppress the worry The oil itself is unlikely to be milky, it will just be accumulations of mayonnaise in places like the sight glass and filler cap. I would be inclined to let the motor idle till the fans kick in after every few rides to give the moisture a chance to boil off.
A newish member on here, Chris who used to build racing Minis with Hayabusa engines, has tried blanking off sections of radiator and was amazed how much he needed to blank off before it had any effect, so don't be afraid to blank off a fair bit...
