XT 600E Glazed Cylinder Sleeve
 

Anyone here experienced that the cylinder sleeve starting to "glaze"? and oil usage starting to increase?
Haven't opened the engine yet, Still figuring out what caused my brother in law's bike to start using oil from about 20000km on the odo.

Spoke to a guy that had a similar problem on his 600e , he said from what he could see afterwards is that his air filter was clogged up while he was doing a longish trip. Because of the clogged filter the bike was running much richer and the process then started to glaze the cylinder sleeve, thus the piston rings are not "sealing" properly. He opened the engine and just replaced the rings and honed the cylinder, after that the bike didn't use a drop of oil.

Anyone here experienced this before?

It is using oil because of the bore and cylinder being worn out of spec from good old mileage. After 20,000km I would expect it to be worn out and using oil. They aren't like a car and go 100,000 on an engine. He got pretty good use out of it. Time to tear it apart and accurately measure the bore for diameter and roundness. If either is bigger than the factory MAX specs, bore out to next size bigger and get new piston and rings. Also a good time to thoroughly check bearings and change all seals and gaskets. Measure up the valves and seats to check for cracking or loose, plus replace valve guide bushing and seals. Do it once and don't shortcut parts or it'll be apart again in another year because the other parts that "seemed" good enough. Just my way of doing it anyways.

20 000 km is nothing for a XT!
BUT, if you've been using a less quality oil/mixing with different brands/types of oil, not having enough oil in the engine and not replacing the oil filter from time to time..

Unless If your bike has blue smoke coming out of the exhaust after it warms up the problem is somewhere else, not there!

P.S.: If your engine is getting too hot, that will make the oil evaporate through the crankcase breather pipe (that connects to the airfilter box) and it will be sucked to the combustion chamber through the air filter. So be kind to your XT and clean/replace your air filter from time to time!

20k is nothing.

How much oil is it using?

You guys over there must put a lot of long highway miles on your bike. Around me most bikes are getting pretty worn at the 20k miles (not km), for single cylinders. We don't do as many trips and such, just short hops and playin in the dirt. Plus most use the cheapest oil they can find(I use Motul, Klotz, and Yamalube), and never change it. It's good to hear that they can go a good while, my 9700mi '88 is just broken in then.

I use my '03 for everything....really.

Its at 120.000km, original untouched motor, and dosent use any oil.

So yeah, pretty reliable. :scooter:

Nahh, Jens does not really ride his XT600E off road. Mostly putting around on the blacktop on sunny days.

see:
Juelsminde Endurojohnny FILE0005.MOV - YouTube

I live in a small 98sq KM island in Azores, I always ride my XT really hard but the longest stretch of road is about 2km... my bike now has about 40 000 ~45 000 of hard and abused km on her!
by abused I mean, running hard (not cruising) with low oil for weeks, until the camchain eventually broke off and the piston bent two valves..

both valves were replaced along with new camchain.
After that I've been using TEXACO 10W40 semi-synthetic oil since then, no other engine problems whatsoever!

so yeah, 20 000 km on the XT is nothing!