Originally Posted by earlwb

I think the problem is the engines are coming assembled and ready to go virtually dry inside with little to no oil. There have been a number of people damaging their engines by not oiling them up before they ran them. The camshaft and cam gear area being the worst for it. Saito suggests running a new engine super rich at first, not exceeding 6000 rpms, and so rich that you may have to leave the glow plug ignitor on too. That is to get oil into the camshaft area in their engines. Unfortunately a number of people didn't read and or ignored the instructions and just took off and ran the engines hard right off the bat, which was bad of course.

Worst still are the radial engines, some people have damaged them for the same reasons in that the cam area or bottom end didn't have much if any oil in it. Then they ran the engine and had parts fail. Granted some inexpensive radials may have had other reasons for the failure. But when the engines were disassembled the camshafts look like they had galling and lack of oil damage to them.

I always suggest to people to remove the valve cover and oil the rockers, squeeze in oil into the crankcase (if you have to, remove the carb and backplate to do it). Then somehow get some oil into the cambox area on the engine. The cambox is the hardest to get some oil into it, just dribbling oil down the pushrod tubes may not work as the oil doesn't exactly easily get past the lifters very well. But it may help in anycase. Some Saito engines had a small vent hole in the cambox, I forget if the new ones have it or not, but one could use a glue syringe to squeeze in some oil into it. OS engines vary as some had a vent in the cambox others didn't, but you could remove the cambox side cover to oil it up good.

Anyway oiling up the engine good, doesn't hurt anything, as the excess gets spit out the crankcase vent anyway. But don't over do it too much though.