Hi Bill,
I’m not suggesting you have a broken ring; it was just an idea for possible cause of the cylinder groove I’ve seen.
I have no experience of the Indian engines but I guess they have a similar breather and cylinder lubrication system?
My thinking on the engine vacuum is that the top of the bore has the least lubrication, the exhaust valve side even less at times, so any breakdown of the breather would show itself here first.
Blow-by would start a downward spiral. Less vacuum, less lubrication, more ring wear and so on.
Yes, by non-oil I mean contaminants. Anything that wasn’t in the oil from new.
I wouldn’t expect wmo to cause any wear before combustion. So long as it’s filtered and dry then it still remains a lubricant.
I believe the standard car fuel filter is around 7 micron. One would therefore think that anything below 7 micron would pass through the system. I’ve found this only to be true up to a certain level (not sure what level) and after that the pump pressures appear to separate the fuel into liquid and solid. It could be this ‘solid’ that is causing the wear, I’m not sure.
Lister types are built with more tolerance so we get away with more contamination.
I am not sure that its the contaminants in the WMO that could be causing the ring wear, as if the contaminants are that abrasive then the fuel injection system would have failed months before the rings and bore.
The ash which I am guessing is causing the wear is a by product of the combustion of WMO, so I can't see how filtering it more finely before use would make any difference .
The next step on from filtering is going to refining and that's not going to be viable at home on a small scale.
One other thing could be the additive package in the oil is causing the abrasive ash but once again you are not going to remove that or the carbon because it's all sub micron.
I am sure my genuine Lister CS is not doing any better than a Listeroid as abrasive fuel in any engine is going to have the same results.
No amount of crank case vacuum is going to get oil to the top ring,as it just the splash feed of oil that oils the cylinder.
Still no one with long hours of WMO use has replied to this thread which is a bit worrying.