What were these needle adjustments??

All of this talk about sealed bearings, cross-drilled sealed bearings, drilled crankshafts, and Saitos spitting more oil than other four-strokes gives rise to a couple more thoughts:

1. A Saito can spit no more oil out than it takes in. For that matter, neither can any other four-stroke.

2. All of the oil that goes into a Saito, or any other four-stroke, must come out. Or, is this not correct? Do four-strokes, other than Saitos, somehow make their oil vanish? I ASSUME that they do not. I could be wrong. Is it possible that the other four-strokes are just taking in less oil than a Saito? My personal experience with other four-strokes is too limited to know. I recently helped an older friend set up a Magnum four-stroke and with the needles set, per instructions, for the initial running that engine was taking in much less fuel...and oil...than any Saito with which I have had experience.

3. New Saitos (I believe hs said his was new) have their LS needles set very rich. And, exhaust large amounts of oil, both in the exhaust and through the crankcase breather, until the LS needle is properly set.

4. For some reason a lot of folks are reluctant to properly tune their Saitos. That is, they are reluctant to sufficiently lean the LS needle. Probably because they usually require what seems to be an inordinate amount of turning to get them properly set.

5. Could it be that the engine under discussion here, since it has the crankcase effluent running back into the intake track, is being impeded in its operation just because of the amount of non-combustible oil (and other by-products of combustion from the blow-by gasses) being dumped into the intake track? Perhaps it needs a little finer tuning.

As a little addendum to this this post: I have noticed that a properly tuned Saito does not put out an inordinate amount of oil at all, either in the exhaust or in the effluent from the crankcase. My Saito-powered planes accumulate no more, and usually a lot less, oil on the airframe than other glow-powered planes after a session of operation. Probably because a well-tuned Saito is not taking in any more oil than a well-tuned anything else.

Also please note: All of the above could be wrong...just the early-morning musings of a rookie R/Cer.

pax vobiscum.