What is Savage LS650 correct oil?

[giro]

Could be this too, the bike is an '87 so it's not exactly a spring chicken, what sort of km's has it got on the clock?

In terms of weight I would expect it to take maybe 15w40 or 20w50.
I have an '81 Yamaha SR500, which is also an air-cooled big single, it takes 20w40 which is not so easy to find these days so I feed it 20w50.

Get yourself an owner's manual, it'll have the manufacturers specified oil weight.

Yeah its old. Miles are 35 thousand but its too old to go by that now.
The manual says 10W-40 & there are 2 advised substitutes if the first is unavailable. Dont think its the oil anymore but next change Ill go heavier anyway. It may help.

[giro]

May as well end this thread here I guess as I have enough to go on. Thanks for everyone for the tips.

The oil gets dirty really quickly so I'm going to make a toilet roll oil filter & reuse the filthy stuff. Will start a new thread 'refining your own oil' if it does as is is supposed to do; clean the black stuff.
Cheers Giro.

[Flip]

I had a LS ages ago that used to do the same thing.

When I measured the friction plates they were almost new, when I measured the springs they were at the good end of as new and my bike used to run also on imMobile 1 also. The bikesclutch began to slip badly on a trip so to get home I just scored up the pressure plates with some emery from a puncher repair kit. On return being a tight bastard and given that the problem was the high film strength of the oil I was using I simply machined up a set of 1.2mm spacers to go under the springs. Problem fixed.

Oil getting dirty quickly is a good thing, it means it is working. If you micro filter used oil you will clean up the carbon and metal particles, but and its a big ass but, the oils viscosity index gets quickly worn out in motorcycle motors and bike oil thin out espcially when hot, this happens relatively quickly, addittionally, the buffer chemicals used to protect the internals from acidic attack get used up and can't be filtered out.

Foot note, I have worked on marine motors where bypass sub micron filters were used to keep the oil clean only to find out that the acid number of the oil had gone up so far that the internals of the motor was being dissolved and the motors had failed in service. By the time the tug had got the fishing boat back the guy who sold the bypass filters and the promise could not be found.

[Subike]

I had a LS ages ago that used to do the same thing.

When I measured the friction plates they were almost new, when I measured the springs they were at the good end of as new and my bike used to run also on imMobile 1 also. The bikesclutch began to slip badly on a trip so to get home I just scored up the pressure plates with some emery from a puncher repair kit. On return being a tight bastard and given that the problem was the high film strength of the oil I was using I simply machined up a set of 1.2mm spacers to go under the springs. Problem fixed.

.

I had this slippy clutch problem on my XS1100. Flips fix by putting spacers behind the springs is what I did, cured the problem. But I was even more of a tight bugger than him. I used the compression washers off of old spark-plugs. worked a treat. I replaced the clutch pack with a Barett Comp plate and springs a year latter, had no slippage problems over that year running 10w 40 mineral oil in the bike.

[giro]

Oil getting dirty quickly is a good thing, it means it is working. If you micro filter used oil you will clean up the carbon and metal particles, but and its a big ass but, the oils viscosity index gets quickly worn out in motorcycle motors and bike oil thin out espcially when hot, this happens relatively quickly, addittionally, the buffer chemicals used to protect the internals from acidic attack get used up and can't be filtered out.

Foot note, I have worked on marine motors where bypass sub micron filters were used to keep the oil clean only to find out that the acid number of the oil had gone up so far that the internals of the motor was being dissolved and the motors had failed in service. By the time the tug had got the fishing boat back the guy who sold the bypass filters and the promise could not be found.[/QUOTE]

Bugger. Well that's changed my opinion on the loo filter experiment. Guess I'll throw out my fibreglass tube. I'll make use of the roll though. Nice to hear the facts from someone knowledgable. Thanks. And thanks for the washer tip; that's just as important.