From: Dave Plowman (News) on
In article <8a33qqFfmgU5(a)mid.individual.net>,
Adrian <toomany2cvs(a)gmail.com> wrote:

> I've never once seen a low oil level light. Oil level gauges, yes. Idiot
> light, no. But I tend to avoid Japanese cars.

Both my SD1 and BMW have a low oil level warning light. As well as an oil
pressure one.

I had an old Bentley once which obviously had some form of float sensor in
the sump - press a button beside the fuel gauge and it read actual oil
level, rather than just a warning when too low.

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*Microsoft broke Volkswagen's record: They only made 21.4 million bugs.

Dave Plowman dave(a)davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
From: Grimly Curmudgeon on
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "TheScullster"
<phil(a)dropthespam.com> saying something like:

>Does it do any lasting damage, running with a low oil level?

Briefly, no. It depends on how much stress was on the bearings at the
time.
Otoh, I had a mate who tended to only top up his bike engine when the
light flashed - he thought it was a level warning, but his bike didn't
have one. Amazingly, it kept running fine.
From: Dave Plowman (News) on
In article <cmro365nou8lpqhb5e6a61htpjmh0icg11(a)4ax.com>, Grimly Curmudgeon
<grimly4REMOVE(a)REMOVEgmail.com> wrote:
> Briefly, no. It depends on how much stress was on the bearings at the
> time. Otoh, I had a mate who tended to only top up his bike engine when
> the light flashed - he thought it was a level warning, but his bike
> didn't have one. Amazingly, it kept running fine.

Don't bikes generally have roller bearings so a bit more tolerant of a
short time without oil?

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*No sentence fragments *

Dave Plowman dave(a)davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
From: Grimly Curmudgeon on
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "Dave Plowman (News)"
<dave(a)davenoise.co.uk> saying something like:

>In article <cmro365nou8lpqhb5e6a61htpjmh0icg11(a)4ax.com>, Grimly Curmudgeon
><grimly4REMOVE(a)REMOVEgmail.com> wrote:
>> Briefly, no. It depends on how much stress was on the bearings at the
>> time. Otoh, I had a mate who tended to only top up his bike engine when
>> the light flashed - he thought it was a level warning, but his bike
>> didn't have one. Amazingly, it kept running fine.
>
>Don't bikes generally have roller bearings so a bit more tolerant of a
>short time without oil?

Many of them did (still do) at that time, but his didn't.

Roller bearing big ends and mains commonly run with 5psi oil pressure,
and I believe a RB would have got away with it, for longer. Still a daft
thing to do, of course.
From: Chris Whelan on
On Tue, 13 Jul 2010 23:20:15 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

[...]

> Don't bikes generally have roller bearings so a bit more tolerant of a
> short time without oil?

Conversely, some of them rely almost 100% on oil for cooling.

Chris

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