Desert technological practices are a finely honed combination of scientific thought and extreme stupidity, as related in the following desert email exchange from a few years back between Bob and Robin...

But seriously, I think two-stroke break-in/heat cycle is several, few minute cycles -- not necessarily an hour of this or that.  Point is to micro-heat-cycle, eg 5 min idle, cool, 5 min mid-throttle riding, cool, 10 minutes harder riding, cool, drain oil, refill, you're done.  Any comments?

I thought that the official 2-stroke break-in cycle was:

  1. Fill with gas
  2. Wonder if gas had oil in it, because you last filled it 9 months ago and was that the time you forgot to bring the premix oil to the gas station?
  3. Try and look at the color of the gas in the tank
  4. Too dark to see in the tank; take 10 minutes to find a flashlight
  5. Take another 10 minutes to find new flashlight batteries
  6. Still can't see: dip a paper towel in the tank to see if there is some colored oil residue on it
  7. Too hard to tell, add some more premix oil just to be safe
  8. Hmmm,  maybe add a little more oil, because that was a lot of work to replace the top end.
  9. Kick a couple of times.
  10. Bike fires right up.  Kinda smoky though.  Engine stops. 
  11. Kick 43 more times.  Bike won't start.
  12. Pull plug: looks like it's oil fouled...
  13. Put in a hotter plug and make mental note to change it out with the next tank of gas.
  14. Go riding.  You may as well pin it, because it's going to break sooner or later.
  15. Forget to change hotter plug with next gas fill.
  16. Melt hole in piston big enough to shove your wallet through.
  17. Rebuild top end again
  18. Repeat from step 1 as required.

 

18 Feb 2007