Castor Oil

Hybrid · Post by **Hybrid** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 8:49 pm

whats the deal with running castor oil in a premix gas/oil mix?

Why run that rather than 'normal' two stroke oil?

It smell pretty cool coming out the back of the scoot

- Yes, I'm strange one :O

sven · Post by **sven** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 10:39 pm

I tried it years ago and when I pulled the motor down a short time later the bore was glazed big time..... but DAMN IT SMELT GOOOOODD!!!!

Hybrid · Post by **Hybrid** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 9:19 am

yeah I heard that glazed and gummed up parts is the bad side of the castor oil, but - from what I've read it works really well when under pressure, and the engine is working hard, esp if you're running lean.

I thought about running a 50/50 mix of castor oil and a syn oil. The syn oil will do a bit of the cleaning of the bore. Then run full syn oil for a couple of tanks to clean things up, once a while.

Thoughts?

Bishy · Post by **Bishy** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 9:26 am

I once tried castor based oil in a TZ250U I was racing down in Taupo after being told by all the old boys it was the shit.
Mixed the fuel and oil up, put enough in the tank for first practice, fired it up and gave it a warm up. Then shut it down and went to the riders briefing. When I came back and got suited up to ride, mechanic started pushin the bike to fire it up. we must have run up and down the (then gravel) pit road for half an hour and it woudn't fire. In the end we took the belly pan off and drained the bowls, and out slowly poured thick, treacle like castor oil.

It would seem in the cold air of the morning the oil and fuel had seperated soon after mixing and the oil had gone south.
So we drained the sytem, flushed it with neat avgas then put the tried and tested synthetic oil back in. Problem solved!

I learned a little later that you sometimes have to put a bit of Acetone in to help the oil mix.
Moral of the story is I think modern synthetics have come a long way from the good old castor based types, and the bikes have too.