Got a bad case of ground hog day. I kneel down on the right side and pull it up, you can feel the balance point Engine hot or cold I've never had a definitive answer on so tend to follow the owners manual.
Nope, similar to parallax error - it will be wrong at the front of the sight glass and further out at the rear of the sight glass. But not by much, try it in your work workshop on the bench when your tinkering next and report back. It will only be one or two mm I think.
Funnily enough I have only just had my backlog delivered and another order is going out this weekend for new stuff and prototypes - good job you reminded me :Wideyed:
I check it on the paddock stand, can't be bothered doing any fancy balancing act (same with chain tension) the difference is minimal either way and it's not as if 1 or 2 mm over or under the line is critical. If you think about it, when the engine's running which is the only time oil level matters anyway, a good proportion of the oil is in circulation so 50-100ml more or less overall isn't really going to make any difference...
The critical engines are dipstick ones. Speed Triples have to be warmed up, left to settle then dipped with the stick screwed fully in. If you don't screw the stick in you'll over-fill it and that can cause damage to those engines. KTMs are different again because they're dry sump. In the oil tank the difference between min and max is relatively small and anywhere around the middle of the window is OK. If you overfill the 990 LC8s they'll spit it out. LC8s burn oil by design so you get used to regular checking. 1290 RC8s don't. I quite like a bike that's meant to use oil. There's no panic when the level drops. All good fun isn't it, motorbikes.
Check off the stand with both wheels on level ground and the bike held level my oil is bob on the top mark, on a paddock stand the level is below the low mark. If you fill oil on a paddock stand you will overfill by quite a margin.
I use an Abba stand. The sight glass on the Ducati is quite close to the swinging arm pivot point where the stand connects so the difference between measuring on the stand or both wheels on the ground is too small to worry about. The KTMs have sight glasses further away from the pivot point at the front of the engine but even on those the difference is negligible. Don't check your oil on a Skylift with the bike at 45 degrees and you'll be fine..
I don't actually have a paddock stand I have two ratcheting axle stands which bear on the R&G axle bobbins. If I want the bike to lean a little to the right, I can use the lowest setting on one stand. If I want the bike on the ground and level in both planes, I use both stands one notch up. If I want the back wheel off the deck, I use both stands two notches up. To raise the bike, I rock it from one stand to the other and lift the unweighted one to the next notch each time. Works a treat
Thinking outside the box (and probably in the other room) I thought this thread was about a missing Shakespeare play.
No biggie, just a pain. Would have been OK if I had a helper to lean bike towards me, but I didn't want to balance on my head. Even on side stand on wood slight angle made oil go to left of bike so hard to get tube in far enough. Think I needed a slightly larger inside diameter tube too as hard to suck it up. Took out about 100ml I guess., maybe a little more.