cammerjeff
Staff Sergeant
Correct, any engine that it is recommended, by all means use it, any engine built in this century should have no issues with synthetic oils.
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My bike is a 2013 BMW R1200 GSW. Castrol 4T Synthetic specified for use. Used since new. No issues. Cars - 2020 Toyota Tacoma - synthetic blend or full synthetic recommended; 2016 Ford Edge - synthetic blend or full synthetic recommended. Just keep it out of older engines, right?
As a kid at local motorcycle races, I loved the aroma of a two-stroke Bultaco or Greeves flying by with that wonderful castor oil aroma. They'd use Castrol or the Francisco castor oil. Did four strokes using it in a wet or dry sump system emit much of the castor oil aroma?Some good history here Castrol R - Motor Sport Magazine
Of course, I had a Norton running on the road with it, it smelled like heaven. It was still being used in UK in the 1970s in speedway engines (500cc four stroke singles) the whole stadium smelled of it. By the early 1980s it wasn't being used by anyone in road racing apart from veteran/vintage types. I used two stroke oil mixed with the petrol in both Yamahas and Suzuki two strokes, the factory T/L oil injection system was disconnected. I had an impromptu race in practice at Brands Hatch with a 500cc Manx Norton, it was quite an experience being behind it, apart from the smell the pulses of the engine made my bike vibrate in sympathy and I could hear my own engine, I had to look at the rev counter.As a kid at local motorcycle races, I loved the aroma of a two-stroke Bultaco or Greeves flying by with that wonderful castor oil aroma. They'd use Castrol or the Francisco castor oil. Did four strokes using it in a wet or dry sump system emit much of the castor oil aroma?
A near neighbour of mine had one in the 1970s painted like a WW2 side car set up.. The story was always that they were built with captured machinery, in fact Russia bought the license to produce them in 1940. Dnepr (motorcycle)One in the 90's a friend of mine went to Bike Week at Daytona Beach and said they were selling Russian made motorcycles with sidecars. Supposedly, they were WWII design BMW's built at the factory the Soviets took back home with them. People who bought them reported that you had to open up the engines and "Scrape the cylinders" after so many miles.
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Did a motorcycle ride on the Magruder Corridor Road in Idaho and Montana in 2006. It's a Forest Service route with primitive areas on either side. About 100 miles long. An iconic trip. One guy along with us, Al, was on a Ural Sidecar rig - the military looking one. Weighed about 1000 lbs, and could barely make 60 mph. Funky, seemed more like an agricultural implement than a motorcycle, but it looked like fun. He and buddy Steve had ridden down from Moscow, ID, and met us at the Idaho end of the Corridor. It was fun to watch him back into parking places. He wasn't fast on the trip, but he was steady. Things were going just fine.A near neighbour of mine had one in the 1970s painted like a WW2 side car set up.. The story was always that they were built with captured machinery, in fact Russia bought the license to produce them in 1940. Dnepr (motorcycle)
He's a very lucky man.Did a motorcycle ride on the Magruder Corridor Road in Idaho and Montana in 2006. It's a Forest Service route with primitive areas on either side. About 100 miles long. An iconic trip. One guy along with us, Al, was on a Ural Sidecar rig - the military looking one. Weighed about 1000 lbs, and could barely make 60 mph. Funky, seemed more like an agricultural implement than a motorcycle, but it looked like fun. He and buddy Steve had ridden down from Moscow, ID, and met us at the Idaho end of the Corridor. It was fun to watch him back into parking places. He wasn't fast on the trip, but he was steady. Things were going just fine.
At one narrow uphill section called Dry Saddle, he must have had a moment of inattention and/or loss of control, and launched off the road, tumbling about 50 yards through a boulder field. (I think the bike's handling can be tricky, especially if you have it in two-wheel drive) The bike flipped over throwing him off. It could have killed him, but he was unhurt. It did scare the hell out of all of us. The sidecar was full of camping gear and a case of Corona in bottles. About half the beer survived. We got all the stuff out and up to the road. A passing family gave him (and the beer and camping stuff) a ride to Magruder Crossing campground on the Selway River. We camped there for the night, and Al was able to relax. We left Al at the campground, and Steve rode back home the next day, and came back with his pickup to take Al home. We continued the ride for another three day. A towing service out of Hamilton, MT, retrieved the bike (to the tune of $1,200 - paid by insurance) Insurance also bought Al a brand new Ural sidecar bike.
Ural link: Ural Motorcycles (imz-ural.com)
Photos of the crash aftermath, with Al. Us at the campground that night. Al is the guy with the white hair. It was brunette the morning before the crash.View attachment 614678View attachment 614681View attachment 614682
View attachment 614677
He's a very lucky man.
How did that compare with Bristol's own bid for the 4 x 20mm cannon spec, the Type 153 (illustrated in post No.4 of this thread)?
Thanks. I have a note that the '153' was calculated to be capable of 357 mph. Not sure what power the Hercules was assumed to be delivering to achieve that.The Bristol design was based on the earlier '151' - 'high-speed' design - just adding bigger wings, accounted for it's short length of only 25' 3"!, perhaps Bristol weren't too confident, hence also offered the twin engine 153A. The B-P P.88a had a span of 39' 6", length 32' 8", w/a 260 sq/f max. wt. 6,573 lbs and max speed of 337 mph @ 15,000' - according to BSP.
Gunston does note that none of the reviewers of the text required the above to be modified.Camm's Tornado fighter could have flown with a Centaurus in 1940, but the development of a good British fighter with a radial engine was - in Fedden's view - deliberately prevented by official bias, centered around Air Marshal (later Air Chief Marshal Sir) Wilfred Freeman. Freeman disliked Fedden as intensely as he liked Hives and his team at Rolls-Royce. The antipathy was quite open, and whereas Major Bulman's problems with Fedden never appeared to warp his judgement, Freeman never tried to exercise any judgement on Bristol engines save to reject them. When the Tornado ground to a halt through failure of the Rolls-Royce Vulture engine, the Centaurus could have been fitted to a specially tailored airframe within two or three (months (Fedden sent Camm an engine in November 1940). In fact, to the disgus t of Freeman, Camm did contrive to build a Centaurus- Tornado, and when he flew it in October 1941 it turned out to be the fastest fighter ever built in Britain up to that time. In its original form it reached 402 mph, but with a redesigned engine installation and four-blade propeller it reached 412 and then 421 mph. Later in the war with a Centaurus IV in a further redesigned installation, it reached 429 mph. Camm became enthusiastic, and managed to get a Centaurus fitted to one of his new thin-wing Tempests, which then (August 1942) was called the Typhoon II. Freeman was furious, and had the engine taken out again. In return Fedden said he wondered whether he could get Freeman impeached for seriously undermining the war effort. The Centaurus fighter was not allowed to fly until June 1943, by which time the excellence of the German Focke-Wulf 190 and American P-47 Thunderbolt had made it difficult for Freeman to insist that a radial-engined fighter must be inferior.
I've been riding for over fifteen years now with at least a 100,000 km ridden, and have never, not once had an oh sh#t moment. I ride to my abilities, always 100% sober, always ATGATT, and never ride until the roads are free of ice, salt, sand and snow. More than half of motorcycle accidents are either entirely or partially the rider's fault - if we control for ourselves we need only worry about those few accidents that are entirely the other guy's fault.I know a guy who slid his bike into a frozen ploughed field. Took him a while to learn to walk and speak, still uses a stick 30 years later
The sleeve valve was promoted by Ricardo as a solution to the poor volumetric efficiency offered by poppet valve high performance engines. At that time there was little doubt that the single sleeve valve flowed more air at equivalent rpm. Also, the sleeve valve combustion chamber was more resistant to detonation due to the absence of an exhaust valve. In radials poppet valve engines only had 2 valves/cylinder, so air flow was limited. I am under the impression the sleeve valve and its activation system was more expensive to produce than the comparable poppet valve.