gold colored glittery oil

[jeffrey]

hi my name is jeff. new to site. just bought a 99 super hawk show room clean with 5200 miles. had it about a month, just put on ebay sourced mig exhaust and stage one jet kit. bike runs and sounds great i love the bike. i changed the oil when i first got the bike, but didnt realy look at it. now after 1000 miles i changed it again and once it was all in drain pan i noticed the oil looked sparkley tiny fleckes of brass or bronze is this from the clutch does it have metal sinterd plates or do i have a problem. also should i be worred about the cct's any info would be great. thanx jeff waterford nj u.s.a.

[Zakalwe]

Is it rumbling/knocking from the bottom end? Gold coloured oil sounds like a bearing shell has spun. I am predicting an expensive and very annoying future..... (I hope I am wrong)

[sirch345]

Welcome aboard Jeff

Tim (Timbo) is right, the CCT's and rectifier (only the earlier non-finned type) are the two real weak points on the Firestorm.

Those tiny flecks of brass or bronze in your oil certainly don't sound good I agree. It would seem your low mileage bike may have some hidden history,

Chris.

[jeffrey]

thank you all for your replys. took oil to good long time friend who ownes a small parts accessories and repair shop he works on all makes and models of bikes both dirt and street he thinks the oil looks fine and i'm just paranoid. as far as knocking or unusual noises it does'nt sound any different than any other vtr's that i heard run on yahoo tube or other web sites i am going to replace cct's with manual ones and hope for the best.thanks jeff

[sirch345]

Jeff,
A good move taking your oil to someone who should know. After all with only 5,200 miles covered it ought to be in excellent condition. Keep your eye on the oil at the next change if everything sounds to be OK as you say it does atm.

Chris.

[benny hedges]

i would also suspect the metal is from the clutch friction discs rather than from a shell.
i use a place called alcontrol for oil analysis as some of the machines i look after have 6 grands worth of oil in (or more) - i dont change the oil unless the test says i need to.
theyre brilliant guys tho and can tell me exactly the state of bearings etc by the levels of certain metals in the oils, much better than my thermal imaging gizmo...
if you are worried, send a sample off for testing.

could also be that at some time a casing has been off and some components have been reassembled with coppaslip or a copper molybdinum grease.
there are no metals in the ccts that would give a goldy tint (afaik)
bearing shells, you usually see bits of silvery white metal before anything else.
could just be the previous owner has added an oil additive?
5k miles, i wouldnt worry too much.

[tony.mon]

I concur.

It's always easier to identify a fault once it's developed a bit; if a bearing shell's going it'll get louder for quite awhile before it does real damage, so you'll get some warning.

Chances are it's the original oil after the 500 mile change, so just normal running in wear.

Try an oil change and monitor again in a few hundred miles.