RE: Welcome to Club SAITO !
Doug:
"Gas Porting" is a method that allows the use of a piston ring with low wall pressure. and still have good sealing under the higher pressure of combustion. Sort of a "Poor Man's Dyke's Ring."
To take full advantage of gas porting you need to start with a lower tension on the ring, else when the cylinder fires the ring pressure against the cylinder wall will be far higher than needed.
Gas porting doesn't help when the ring wears either. As the ring wears it gets greater side clearance in the ring groove, this allows the combustion gases to reach behind the ring and increase the pressure just as the gas ports do.
So, to summarize, unless the piston ring is specially made for a ported piston at best it doesn't help, at worst the added pressure, increasing friction, actually lowers the useful power from the engine.
Castor oil will not harm any of our engines. In some places you can find "Pro" YS users recommending a castor blend. The thing you need to be careful of, running a YS, is to be sure your synthetic oil is truly synthetic, and not made from a petroleum base. The petroleum base will destroy the regulator diaphragm.
Bill.