ORIGINAL: wingstrut
Hey Guys, I need to add my two cents............Saito needs to go back to making four strokes and leave the oil to us.
I'm not sure about the very latest synthetics but I was on a test team many years ago when synthetics came out.
We tested them at Daytona in an air cooled formula vee. It destroyed the engine, the tranny and differential was fine.
After extensive testing we found that synthetic oil when getting near the combustion chamber.... in other words getting hot,.. would burn away leaving no protection.
Where as castor would also burn, but would not go away.....Just turned brown.
I run syn/castor in my helicopter and have had excellent success with it ...(OS 50 hyper)
I run syn/castor blend in my cars also....I have an OS 21 that is 14 years old. still running strong. This engine doesn't have a ring.....much tighter clearances than the Saito.
I have to agree running straight castor is to much, but a little goes a long way in protecting your engine.
We could discuss this for a long time, but I personally will run syn/castor in my Saito and if any thing ever happened to it I will just tell them I ran what they recommended.
I hope this helps a little
There exissts two types of synthetic oil USA type and European type which have very different qualities
The European type is from the Ester family and typicaly 10% of this type willl replace 15% of the USA types from a different chemical family
In Europe lots of engines are run on only ~10% to12 %synthetic oils with no problems where when the same engine is used in the USA the synthetics is ~15% to ~17%
I dont know what engine the Japanese world 3D champion Helicopter users use but they now run 10% synthetic 0% Castor which they ship out ahead of them to the compition ( the type of synthetic is rumored to be even a superiour form of the Ester oils)
3% Castor probably wont do any harm and lots of Saito owners never have problems with using low % of castor
I for one having never used Castor in fuels since 1994 and my engines worked fine standard wear rates I ant in any hurry to go putting chewing gum Castor oil all over my planes or in my engines
So all information seems to suggest that both oils used correctly will work well and its a matter of prefernce and budget issues in some countries whee syntheticoils can be expensive or unobtainable
All my engines (all run in and tested )now use 10% EDL 5% nitro 85% methanol but will work OK when run in on Zero% nitro levels as I tried that also but prefer a Tad of nitro for some of the other engines and means the same fuels for the engines Saito included
If nitro costs go orbital I may reduce the %of nitro to zero or replace Nitro with cheaper acetone
Just waiting to see the newer prices
Balsaeater