What oil?

[Daniel Runyon]

I ran a small lawn care company for a few years and instead of buying six packs of little bottles of oil, on a friend's recommendation, I switched to marine outboard oil. If I remember correctly, it was labeled TCW3. Anyway my buddy was retired from a refinery, and he said as long as it was labeled TCW3 it was better than any name brand two cycle oil. A gallon of the stuff at Walmart was $10-$15. I went through hundreds of gallons of mixed fuel using that stuff and never had any issues. If anything, my older equipment seemed to smoke less.

Has anyone had any experience using that type oil?

 

[FOG]

I use Peak from Pep Boys cuz it's the cheapest thing I can find. I'll have to check out Wal-Mart ...

Back in the day all we had was good ol' 30 wt motor oil. As you can imagine pulling over to clean your spark plug was a common occurrence. Yamaha solved that problem on their Enduro line by putting 2 plugs in a single cylinder motorcycle. When one plug fouled all ya had to do was switch the coil wire over to the other one.

I ride a 360cc example of the breed and every now and then someone will notice the bare plug and wonder how that works.

 

[Daniel Runyon]

Yeah motor oil has additives designed to prevent the oil from burning. Otherwise cars would smoke. I haven't had experience using Walmart TCW3 in my bike yet, but it was great in all my other two strokes. I just kept a little bottle to measure. I'll have to pick up a gallon.

 

[Tony01]

I use Peak from Pep Boys cuz it's the cheapest thing I can find. I'll have to check out Wal-Mart ...

Back in the day all we had was good ol' 30 wt motor oil. As you can imagine pulling over to clean your spark plug was a common occurrence. Yamaha solved that problem on their Enduro line by putting 2 plugs in a single cylinder motorcycle. When one plug fouled all ya had to do was switch the coil wire over to the other one.

I ride a 360cc example of the breed and every now and then someone will notice the bare plug and wonder how that works.

Lol! I always thought the second hole was for a compression release.

 

[Larry Trotter]

Only down side to marine 2 cycle oil is that it may or may not be stable at the higher temperatures that air cooled engines operate at. Discovering one that’s not able to stand the temperature will probably cost you a set of piston and rings with a few gaskets also.

 

[Citi-sporter]

Semi-Synthetic premix oil like Lucas is much better than TCWIII oil which is meant for water cooled outboard engines and is made from Dino base stock, not Iso-petroleum stock like the semi-synthetic.

Semi synthetic has better lubricity and viscosity at higher temperatures.

Our little 2 cycle engines aren't overly stressed at 48 and 66cc while making less than 3 hp. Premix i the fuel and oil at 33:1. You'll be fine. My 1968 Yamaha Trailmaster 80 cc bike makes 7 H.P. and it's 44 years old, and has old school porting. Our engines are very low power.