Raptor SD Oil Change

kraky

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If I remember right on my old raptor SD......the Hustler owner manual wanted oil and filter changes in one half the time that both Kawasaki and hydro gear recommended.
Just double checked the manual on my Yamaha 1300 V Twin cruiser. They want the oil changed every 4000 miles and the filter every 8000. Figuring an average speed of about 45 mph that 8,000 mile filter change equates to about 175 hours.
And like I said that oil also Services the clutch and transmission...geez. I always liked the magnetic oil drain plugs on those motorcycles though!
 

tbarnett

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I changed the oil and filter at 8 hours and again at 50 hours. Every 50 hours thereafter.

As for pre-filling the filter, place the filter on a level surface with the screw hole side up and fill it about 2/3rds with fresh oil. Allow it to sit a few minutes and the filter will literally absorb the oil. Then you can place the filter on the engine. Basically, you are priming the filter before startup.

I've done this for years with mower equipment and vehicles.
 

BlazNT

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Just for general knowledge. None of the oil change companies prefill the oil filters. They do not have oil in the bay under the car so they can not prefill. Just food for thought.
 

turboawd

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Just for general knowledge. None of the oil change companies prefill the oil filters. They do not have oil in the bay under the car so they can not prefill. Just food for thought.

and why would they? they don't give a crap about your vehicle. :laughing:
 

bertsmobile1

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If I remember right on my old raptor SD......the Hustler owner manual wanted oil and filter changes in one half the time that both Kawasaki and hydro gear recommended.
Just double checked the manual on my Yamaha 1300 V Twin cruiser. They want the oil changed every 4000 miles and the filter every 8000. Figuring an average speed of about 45 mph that 8,000 mile filter change equates to about 175 hours.
And like I said that oil also Services the clutch and transmission...geez. I always liked the magnetic oil drain plugs on those motorcycles though!

But your Yamaha probably never saw anything other than nice level bitumen or concrete.
And the only time it had a chance to injest dust would be .253 seconds as you crossed a soft shoulder leaving a filling station.
When I used to go trail riding it was a new filter almost every ride and an oil change + filter every sason.
If we were in drought it might get fresh oil every 2nd or 3rd ride.
It has a substantially bigger oil pump with metered pressurized oil delivery to almost every moving part.
It has a forged conrod, not a cast one and most likely a Sn-Al-Cu slipper bush on the big end , indium plated.
So you are making a strawberry vs pineapple comparrison.
 

kraky

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With all due respect I think you might be the one that made the strawberry versus pineapple comp. Although it did get me to thinking about the differences of where I mow at my house and the air quality at the cabin when I'm mowing. At my house is heavy clay and there is relatively little dust in the air when mowing. At the cabin is sand and there's dust in the air almost all the time....Luckily grass grows very slow there. These kind of variances are probably why some owners manuals talk about normal conditions and extreme conditions?
 

bertsmobile1

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Yes however the cheapest part you can put into an engine is clean oil.
In case you do not read across the entire forum I suggest you read the thread "cleaning filters with kerosene ".
I am yet to see an engine suffer damage from having oil in it that was too clean.
But I have tossed a lot of engines that customers brought in that had oil which was too dirty.
A lot of them are still running splash lubrication and not fitted with any filter at all.

There is also the conditions of use to consider.
Mower engine sit around for a week , get used for an hour or so then sit around for another week.
Then it goes to a two week cycle then 3 then 4 then 2 months then it is back into mowing season.
The sump on a mower engine is very large in cross section but very shallow in depth thus any deposits in the oil can not harmlessly sing to the bottom of the sump but will get stirred up and reciirculate each & every time you mow.
Thus the relatively small intervals between recommended oil changes.
 

kraky

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Being in the jd lawn and ag business for 30 years I saw my share of Horror Stories too. We sold a ton of the single cylinder Kawasaki JD 160 / 180 lawn tractors in our day to farmers who just never seem to get around to maintaining their lawn tractors.
Then they sit all winter long in the Machine Shed with a moist dirt floor.
The first stage of the air cleaner was a mouse nest.... the engine oil was coal black and had the viscosity 2 notches thicker than gear oil.... yet somehow these engines would go year after year after year and never even seem to take a beating.
I guess that was the Good Ol days when Kawasaki had an unbelievable reputation doesn't seem like the new ones are quite so Stellar LOL
 

bertsmobile1

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Well it goes like this.
Think about how much those engines costed back then and what you earned back then so you can convert the cost of the engine into days of work.
Do the same for a modern engine and now you will suddenly see that the modern engine is around 1/2 to 1/3 of the REAL COST of the engine not the dollar number.
So those older engines were a lot more expensive and there was a lot more profit in making them so they could be made substantially better.

Next we have computers now days and a good operator can model changes in tiny incriments till the part "fails" on the desk simulation so you now get an engine with the thinnest lightest parts that will last the designed service life when looked after properly.
Back then the physical parts had to be made,assebled into an engine then the engines run to destruction, pulled apart, analysed, improved , modified whatever then the new part assembled into another engine and the whole circus starts over.
This costs a small fortune to do.
Thus it was cheaper to over engineer the engines.
This applies to all "Consumer Durables" from car to tooth brushes.
Nothing last as long as it used to unless you buy the absolute top shelf item.
However most of us no longer have the skills to evaluate what is a top shelf item and our decisions get peverted by things like advertising.
AS I have said before, back in 1964 my father paid more ( in hours of labour ) for his base model push mower than most of the big box ride ons cost today.
His old push mower is still running perfectly and the only major part I have replaced is the piston rings once.
My sister still uses it to mow the common grounds around the block of units she lives in.
Even if you knew your push mower will last you 50 years would you pay $ 2500 for one ?
The answer is no you will pay $250 for one that might last 5 years then go shopping for another one when that one starts to play up.
I have a theory that one of the reasons we are so time poor now days is that we will no longer pay for top shelf good so we need to continually replace them and in the case of a mower you can spend more time looking and deciding what to buy than you will using it for the next year if not longer.
Think about it.
The average mowing time down here on a 1/2 to 1/4 acre residential block is 30 hours a year
 

kraky

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Your sermon made me do a little bit of a real world snicker....
The next generation of Kawasaki engines after those bullet proof single-cylinder was the liquid-cooled V-Twin.... boy were they smooth and quiet and everybody went out the door just smiling.
Then those cool plastic camshaft gears spit themselves out at about 700 hours.
People came in 12 to 15 years later complaining about what junk jd was because their engine was out.... nobody wanted to hear that in the past, kawasakis engine had been stellar and that John Deere didn't tell them to put a plastic camshaft gear in there! Guessing one of your computer Engineers was to blame! You are correct Engineers are not hired to make things more expensive!
 
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