Do wheelies starve your oil feeds and damage the engine?

[rastuscat]

Wheelied my thou for miles and miles and never noticed any problems.

Aye, caught you doing one once. Good wheelie tho, if I do say so

[onearmedbandit]

Aye, caught you doing one once. Good wheelie tho, if I do say so

I only stopped because I knew you guys were being assessed and I didn't want to make you look bad in front of your superiors, nice guy that I am and all.

[Kornholio]

96 to 2003 GSXRs have oil starvation issues when continuous wheelies at or near 12 O'clock are performed. Long "coasters" with the bike bouncing off the rev limiter while the clutch is disengaged don't help either. Modified oil pick-ups are fairly popular for these models as they don't respond well to over filling the engine oil as a quick fix.

Big scenic 10 o clock standups seem to be ok on those models(well the 750 anyway )... the odd 12 o clock and and beyond when hitting a hedgehog or possum but that not too prolonged tho in my experience

[MarkH]

The reason why everyone ran to the hills was because people put heavy oil in them and the poor little pump could not get the oil around in time to keep the engine cool. People (Honda PR) said it was due to wheelies.....but the fact of the matter was the owners manual recommended 10w20. This oil is fine for commuting and normal use, but if you thrash the crap out of it doesn't cool in time. What the engines such as the NC20 wanted was thinner and handled broader range of temp. I found 5w50 Visco 5000 worked the best.

Ummm, what you said sounds completely the wrong way around - you are suggesting that 20 weight oil is too heavy and 50 weight oil is better? 10w20 is VERY thin for motor oil - MUCH thinner than 5w50. I use a 40 weight oil (10w40, 5w40 or anything else ending in 40) because that is what Suzuki recommend, I avoid the 50 weight oils (like 5w50) because it is thicker than the recommended oil.

Is it perhaps a typo and you didn't mean 10w20 at all? I would have thought that 10w40 would have been pretty common - but that is still thinner oil than 5w50.

I do agree with the handling of broader range of temperature though - that is why I only use fully synthetic oil (like Mobil 1).