Switching from Castor to Synthetic

digginfool · December 26, 2008, 09:40:42 AM

Since new, I've run castor oil in my son's quad and I've decided to change to synthetic (tired of the wife complaining about the aroma - personally, I love it). I've heard in the past that the castor will gel if mixed with regular two-stroke oil. If that's true, how much cleaning do I need to do prior to using synthetic oil? Do I need to clean the crankcase as well or will flushing the tank and carb be enough?

4fittyr · December 26, 2008, 10:12:33 AM

yes 2 stroke oils don't mix well together and will cause a problem. so why switch if something works well stay with it,cause u gotta luv the bean oil scent, mc1 is the best synthetic imo but clean and flush well before u add different so u got no problems later on

Yamaha72 · December 26, 2008, 01:08:03 PM

If your switching to a synthetic it'll probably have a much fowler and unpleasant odor then the castor blend oil... What brand do you run.? Maxima 927 is what I ran in my Blaster when I used to have it.. Great stuff and it smelled good at that.. Getting at your question though I'd say clean the carburetor to prevent any cross-contamination and flush the tank with some sort of degreasing/cleaning petroleum based solvent and allow it to dry if you do the switch.

Team Alba Z400 Rider 43 · December 26, 2008, 02:21:24 PM

It is oil injected correct? Just drain the oil reservoir tank, and pour in new. Petroleum and Synthetic two stroke oil can gel up in big amounts. I myself would clean the carb just to be safe, but you should be fine. After you pour in the new just run some Sea Foam through it to clean the carb. Golden Spectrum is still the best two stroke pure synthetic oil in my opinion. I think most of the old school 250r racers would agree with me.

When I was really little and had my e-ton 90, my father picked up a kit that gets rid of the oil injection so you can mix the gas like you would any other normal two-stroke. I forget where he got it though. It's not very hard to do.

trx#9 · December 26, 2008, 04:20:55 PM

Golden spectro synthetic blend is the only oil I would ever use in a 2 stroke. In my 2 stroke days no one was harding on motors than I and I never seized a motor due to lubrication. Do worry about the initial switch, the only thing is to clean the oil tank. I personally would take the oil injection off and pre mix my self, those oil injection systems always run the engine to rich.
Ok, my corn tooth friend.

auctioneer · December 27, 2008, 08:18:47 PM

When I raced 2 stroke outboards I would switch from Klotz green castor to Amsoil synthetic and had no problems

digginfool · December 30, 2008, 06:32:14 PM

Thanks for the info. The quad does not have oil injection so no worries there. We always ran 927 but like I said before, the folks following behind my son complain of the smell and burning eyes/nose. Might be the 110 octane we run.

So, I guess after going through the carb and flushing the fuel tank, all that's left is to mix up a fresh batch of VP with the Golden Spectro.

trx#9 · December 30, 2008, 09:49:03 PM

Quote from: digginfool on December 30, 2008, 06:32:14 PM
Thanks for the info. The quad does not have oil injection so no worries there. We always ran 927 but like I said before, the folks following behind my son complain of the smell and burning eyes/nose. Might be the 110 octane we run. So, I guess after going through the carb and flushing the fuel tank, all that's left is to mix up a fresh batch of VP with the Golden Spectro.

I always ran 5 gallons of race gas to one bottle of Spectro, 52 to 1 ratio.