I actually fired my bike today!The oiling system was not as catastrophic as it potentially could have been but it wasn't a total success either. After running for maybe 30 seconds it began spewing oil out the vent hole in the cap. I suspect the stand tube was not evacuating oil quickly enough. Dad went into crazed Engineer math mode and determined a 30% increase in the size of the holes in the stand tube would increase the effective flow by about 70%. I'll have to figure out how much I can increase their size without weakening the stand tube too much since it also secures the lid.
The other option would be to plug the vent hole in the cap and vent the actual lid with something like this breather.
5 comments:
Wow, let me know how it goes. I have to think about this a bit. Any way to tell if the top end is getting oil?
Hard to say for sure. It didn't run long enough for anything to get warm.
I'm pretty confident that if the flow of oil to the stand pipe was more than the 4 holes could handle, it would blow out the top. Even if the 4 holes were large enough but filled to 90% capacity the tank won't vent correctly.
If my thinking is correct, you might as well open up those holes (or add more) to your heart's content. The flow restrictor at the bottom of the stand tube is theoretically restricting the flow properly, so you just need to make sure that the upper part of the stand tube is more than open enough.
I guess the other part of this is to make sure that the pickup tube is working properly to pull the oil level back down. Any way to check that?
When the cap is on, the stand tube is actually loaded in tension. Because of this, I think there is very little risk of waekening the stand tube too much.
Must be scary to have two nerdy engineers on the project simultaneously...
Funny! It is a little scary when you two aren't both in the same room. When you are in the same place I can simply leave for a cup of coffee until a consensus is met;)
The pickup tube is what's been keeping me up nights. I kicked it over (manually priming the pump) until I was sure I was getting oil though the feed line. I've also been praying not to smell that distinctive smell you get right before a bike seizes... Made it through the first 30 seconds.
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