OIL RATIO DISCUSSION ON THE 800 CFI MOTORS

Good read guys and interesting topic for sure.

Hopefully other knowledgeable people will see this thread and give their real world results over their many years of tuning (i.e. IndyDan, etc.).

richracer1 said:

Step 6 buddy

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It's not 100% on this(it says lower & raise, you could take that different ways), so I'm gonna ask:
So it's clockwise = more oil , counter clockwise = less oil ?????

Turbo, Looking at the drawing, it looks to me like the linkage arm is mounted raising straight from the lever.
Looking at the drawing, it looks to me like raising the arm, would increase the oil %.
Reading the written directions, turning the linkage adjustment screw clockwise raises the arm, which would increase the oil %.
Thus, we can extrapolate that clockwise would increas the oil%.

BUT! Having been wrong before :face-icon-small-dis, I'm gonna take a peek at the alignment marks (lever notch and pumb boss line) adjust it, and take another peek. Ah, reasurance, nice.

Bag

Bagger said:

Turbo, Looking at the drawing, it looks to me like the linkage arm is mounted raising straight from the lever.
Looking at the drawing, it looks to me like raising the arm, would increase the oil %.
Reading the written directions, turning the linkage adjustment screw clockwise raises the arm, which would increase the oil %.
Thus, we can extrapolate that clockwise would increas the oil%.

BUT! Having been wrong before :face-icon-small-dis, I'm gonna take a peek at the alignment marks, adjust it, and take another peek. Ah, reasurance, nice.

Bag

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Pull in the throttle lever while watching the arm, that should tell you.

richracer1 said:

Step 6 buddy

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After reading my post, the "buddy" comment could easily be taken as derogatory, but please believe me when I say it wasn't meant in any such fashion.

Kelsey if there is an SAE paper with this data, we just need to check that out and maybe it'll save me a bunch of work. Not being facetious here--there's no need to duplicate someone else's testing! But if it's based on old engines with old non-instrumented dyno equipment then we should do it again with modern engines and modern testing equipment. This surely is splitting frog hairs, but the mad sled hotrodders know that 10 frog hairs = one blonde C-hair which is good. And yes friction from hydraulic drag created with excessive bearing lube just turns HP into hot oil, which in turn adds heat to the incoming charge air, further reducing HP but probably not bothering the engine parts. Once again just a frog-hair's worth but perhaps significant to racers who want every fraction of a HP, especially the free ones! MH and I both goofed as kids by glunking 3-1 oil on the free-spinning dry ball bearings on our skateboards with obvious results. KC tells me that gear texts now recommend lubrication of very high-speed gears by air-oil mist, delivered to the opening side of the mesh. Mist is also the choice for high-speed turbine ball and roller bearings. This essentially means only a few molecular layers of oil are still on the parts when they touch each other. But now if we optimize the oiling of the crank bearings, we might shortchange the piston skirts which on poorly calibrated EFI sleds (ie: CFI4 800 lean midrange) might need lots of extra oil there to prevent scuffing and sticking while trying to drive there at 16 or 17/1. Once again, proper calibration by adding fuel with Boondocker, PCV etc, especially midrange part throttle will allow for great piston reliability without the need for drowning them in lube. Yes we can probably predict the amount of oil the the engine makes the most HP with, but that's with everything optimized--120 degree F coolant temp, 1100-1200 deg F pipe center section gas temp, 12/1 A/F ratio. But if you ride a CFI4 800 and refuse to add fuel to the stock midrange, then you may need more than optimal oil to achieve reliability, at the expense of a froghair's worth of HP.

Jim I read that SAE paper so many years ago I can not remember the details But I thinkit was done by Yamaha... so it would have been a very detailed test.. I will look and see if I can find it.. But I suspect it islong gone with all the computer changes I have done over the years..
I amhaving a hard time with the over lubed rod bearings creating hydraulic drag... Unless you mean outer crank bearings?? But the rod bearing, IMO, needs all it can get and will not offer any negative effects if over-lubed.
Focusing in the cylinder wall oil layer , IMO, not where one should be focusing... the oil film on the wall will always be there if you do not lean out..... the big end bearing is the problem area and the area the NEEDS GOOD OIL and good oil PENETRATION.. NOT just oil running over it.. but embedding itself in the rod and bearing cage voids.

With all the bottom end failures around.. the oil or lack ther of, is a factor..

Kelsey

RKT said:

Jim I read that SAE paper so many years ago I can not remember the details But I thinkit was done by Yamaha... so it would have been a very detailed test.. I will look and see if I can find it.. But I suspect it islong gone with all the computer changes I have done over the years..
I amhaving a hard time with the over lubed rod bearings creating hydraulic drag... Unless you mean outer crank bearings?? But the rod bearing, IMO, needs all it can get and will not offer any negative effects if over-lubed.
Focusing in the cylinder wall oil layer , IMO, not where one should be focusing... the oil film on the wall will always be there if you do not lean out..... the big end bearing is the problem area and the area the NEEDS GOOD OIL and good oil PENETRATION.. NOT just oil running over it.. but embedding itself in the rod and bearing cage voids.

With all the bottom end failures around.. the oil or lack ther of, is a factor..

Kelsey

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I think these comments about bottom-end parts are very important. "Back in the day" when iron bore cylinders were the norm, oil was critically important in the top end as well, but nicasil is extremely hard and wear-resistant. However, the relatively small amount of oil needed to keep nicasil happy isn't enough to keep crank bearings alive for long periods of time. Extra oil might be "wasted" on the top end of the motor, but I absolutely agree the bottom end needs it. Unless your bearings are submerged in oil, there is almost no such thing as "too much".

After speaking with 3 other "heavyweights" in the last couple of days on this topic, all 3 agreed that a 32:1 ratio with pre-mix is the way to go for reliability. However, at this time they are not willing to put this in writing on the internet for fear of their recommendations being misconstrued or relationship issues with Polaris.

diamonddave said:

After speaking with 3 other "heavyweights" in the last couple of days on this topic, all 3 agreed that a 32:1 ratio with pre-mix is the way to go for reliability. However, at this time they are not willing to put this in writing on the internet for fear of their recommendations being misconstrued or relationship issues with Polaris.

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DD, were they specifically referring to the CFI-2 motor, with respect to the pre-mix qualification, or carbed/case injected 2 strokes in general? Thanks for sharing.

diamonddave said:

After speaking with 3 other "heavyweights" in the last couple of days on this topic, all 3 agreed that a 32:1 ratio with pre-mix is the way to go for reliability.

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Except premixing on the new CFI 2 will not get adequate oil to the bearings as mentioned above. You would have to inject oil into the crank case nozzles somehow.

Ya know a couple of years ago this site went user pay and someone at the time figured out it was going to cost me 3 cents a day to be here. I think I just got my moneys worth.:face-icon-small-win

synthetic on break-in

As stated in an earlier post, it really is "old school" to think you need non-synthetic oil during break-in. High performance, big buck sports cars like Porsche, Ferrari, Corvettes, etc come from the factory with full synthetic oil in the crankcase.
As far as the oil pump adjustment, whether it is cable or rod, you would adjust the lever in the direction that it will move when the throttle is pulled, so it is injecting more oil at an earlier stage. If you adjust the wrong way, it will add slack to your cable.
Does anyone know what ratio the oil injectors are set at the factory? And doesn't the PRO come from the factory with synthetic in it?
GREAT POST, MOUNTAINHORSE! GOOD DISCUSSION, EVERYONE!

sledcaddie said:

As stated in an earlier post, it really is "old school" to think you need non-synthetic oil during break-in. High performance, big buck sports cars like Porsche, Ferrari, Corvettes, etc come from the factory with full synthetic oil in the crankcase.
As far as the oil pump adjustment, whether it is cable or rod, you would adjust the lever in the direction that it will move when the throttle is pulled, so it is injecting more oil at an earlier stage. If you adjust the wrong way, it will add slack to your cable.
Does anyone know what ratio the oil injectors are set at the factory? And doesn't the PRO come from the factory with synthetic in it?
GREAT POST, MOUNTAINHORSE! GOOD DISCUSSION, EVERYONE!

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Of course you don't need non-synthetic for break in but non-syn does create more friction which breaks the rings in SOONER. The oil that comes in the new Pros is Polaris non-syn without the blue dye and I've confirmed this. Your analogy is also skewed as you put a lot more miles on cars than sleds (unless you live in MN, :face-icon-small-hap) so the time to break in isn't an issue. My sleds will only see non-syn for break in because I simply don't want to wait as long... :face-icon-small-ton

Have FUN!

G MAN

PS - Raising the arm increases oil flow so turn the screw clockwise. I did one full turn and it's working well. Getting at that jam nut is a PITA tho! Has it just to the point where it doesn't smoke real bad nor foul plugs too bad but any more and it would. Ratio is too difficult to figure yet as I didn't have enough time to get a good average late last season.

Sledcaddie all those high performance car engines you speak of are hand assembled and broken in on an engine dyno BEFORE installation. They are also 4 strokes. Also, the sticker tells you to use synthetic, not sure what comes in those cars when new but I know that is what they lead us to believe.

Very good read!!!
Thanks for the all help and explanations everyone!!!!

RKT said:

There are a few SAE papers that address this very issue.. they are older papers but there was extensive testing and data associated with them..

Long story .. short.. more oil proved more power EVERYTIME down to a certain ratio and then it became counter productive..

More oil will ALWAYS make your crank happy...

I have ALWAYS recommended MORE oil in ANY 2 stroke engine..

The dyno will not tell us what we we need to know unless you run 2 minute or more pulls and then keep it running at moderate levels for 30+ minutes..

Real world testing and , more importantly, engine inspection after a season will tell the story of how "happy" the engine internals were...

Kelsey

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Amen Kelsey ,I'll second every word of that quote and I'll add, it has nothing to do with old school or new school...its proven by many from the school of hard knocks over years far beyond just my 15+ years of two stroke work.

Jim, your dyno results will be interesting to say the least and I predict will suprise many folks.


Curt

Here's a question I have seen brought up, what is adding oil going to do to the octane rating of the overall fuel. It really is only a concern for turbos or majors mods but something to think about. Is it going to help stabilize the fuel and prevent det or lower the octane and increase det. Also any chance it might mess with the knock sensor.


I think there is a big gap in some of the discussion going on, the guys that know how to test also tune to near perfection vs the guy that just turns up the pump.

For the guys that just want to turn it up, here is something to think about.

Turning up the pump will make the sled run richer because oil is a fuel and you are adding more oil. For the most part it wont matter but if a sled was already tuned rich and then added oil it could cause problems/ it may need tune to get the full potential, so be aware of it.

If oil is added to the gas tank it actually leans out the amount of fuel, like mentioned above it prob wont effect it but also keep it in mind. It also wont supply oil to the same places the injection will.

All oils could be different and should be tuned accordingly, so when poo says run this, thats what the sled has been tuned to run on, changing the amount or type could cause different things to happen in either direction, so you should check it out, pull plugs, pipe, etc.. and inspect.

On break in, I have heard many times people claim not to use synthetics, but when researched, (I made a lot of calls to people that actually test oil) non of them said its any different and to run whats recommended. I have only used one type of oil/additive that was such a friction reducer the engine didn't break in right.

Also, just my opinion on what I have found, researched and makes sense to me-- take it for what its worth.
More oil wont (shouldn't) effect break in, I would think more would help. Break in of the rings is established from compression, when under compression the ring push harder against the cylinder. Some say break it in easy, which in my opinion is wrong. IMO you want to load the motor hard on throttle and off the throttle, not abuse it just give it a good full load, which a little more oil will help in both aspects.

I would run at least 40:1, not sure about lower than that for octane reasons.

My experience with oil and tuning, this is not a polaris example but the concept applies so don't flame me please.
I put a delete on my m1000 and mixed with 40:1 with oe oil, (stock the cats seem to run somewhere between 35-40:1 depending on what kind of riding) had slp pipe kit, bdx intake, bd box, etc... knowing it might run leaner without the oil pump I increased my fuel pressure 2psi and then tuned with the bd box accordingly. I also tuned it rich on the low end to help get oil to transfer through everything but only enough it didn't effect performance. I then installed a PCIII on it and for some reason it caused a major low end lean bog, and I tuned that out. A few rides with the PCIII and it wiped out a crank bearing, remember I was still at 40:1 but the leaner condition just sucked all the lube right past the bearing and into the cylinder. It was quite the learning experience.

I hope this made sense and helped some.