Installing The Scottoiler

Next up, we have the Scottoiler.  This is the most commonly available oiler, the one that everyone else compares themselves to.  It's the only oiler in my comparo, that is sold by multiple vendors here in the USA.  I found it was available from a vendor I already know and think highly of, Adventure Motostuff in Carson City NV.  Chad at Adventure Motostuff hooked me up when my V-Strom's chain went bad on a trip, a couple years ago.  It's an awesome store, with things in stock that I would normally have to order.  When they came up in my search for a Scottoiler vendor, I looked no farther.  

There is a basic, Universal Scottoiler.  Then there's a Touring Scottoiler with a larger reservoir.  And there's an optional Dual Injector Kit.  I decided to get the touring version and the dual injector.  The items in the kits I ordered are pictured up above.  The things on the white paper are the contents of the dual injector kit, and the rest of the things are the contents of the touring kit.  As you can see, there is an intimidating array of stuff!  Don't let this scare you off, though - you don't use all of it.  It just comes with all these pieces, so you can fit it to a variety of bikes.  

But even with all that, it doesn't have everything for every bike.  The instructions list several bikes, including the VFR, that they offer extra special parts to fit.  They say they'll send them for free, just write and ask.  So if you are installing it on a VFR, make sure you drop 'em a note and get your free extra parts before you start trying to fit it.  I was fitting it on a Yamaha TDM850, so I did not have to write for the extra parts.

So the first thing I did, was fit the Dual Injector Kit.  This turned out to be pretty simple - there's a bracket with several holes in it, that you can turn whichever way you need to, to line it up so the fingers brush lightly on either side of the sprocket.  You could attach it to the spot where the spools go in, except this bike doesn't have the fittings for spools.  You can glue it on (they provide glue).  Or you could do what I did, and just zip tie it in place.  They provide lots and lots of zip ties.



They provide a lot more of the stiff black tubing than you need, and in the instructions there is a method to make replacement applicator fingers out of it.  So I've squirreled the extra away on the end of my workbench with all the other extra parts I keep accumulating.

Note the clean chain and sprocket.  The VFR had a brand new chain and sprocket when I installed the Pro-Oiler.  This bike is not so lucky; its chain has about 8000 miles on it, and I had let it get pretty filthy.  I cleaned off as much of the accumulated dirt and grime as I could, not so much for nice pictures, but to reduce the chance of that gunk clogging up the ends of the applicator, and to reduce the amount of truly filthy crud available to be flung all over the wheels and bodywork when the oiler rinses it through.  

Next, I fit the reservoir.  This is actually a bit easier than it was with the previous two oilers, because I didn't have to find a place to hide it.  That big square thing in the kit picture, is designed to bolt on under the license plate.  In Europe, bike license plates are square and exactly that size.  And since most bikes sold here are also sold there, the stock tail section on this one had plenty of room for the square box.  If you've bobbed your rear fender, you won't have space for it, so don't buy the Touring Scottoiler - get the Universal one instead.  Note, my Michigan plate doesn't hide it, so the box looks kinda goofy.  I'll hafta find something else to augment my license plate, I guess.  Or just leave it exposed even if it is funny looking; I guess it will make it easier to keep an eye on it.  I had to enlarge the holes in my license plate slightly, since they were about 2mm short of matching up with the attachment holes on the Scottoiler box.  And I had to drill one additional hole, at the bottom of the fender, to attach the box.

The box has a compartment in it to hold the oil.  It's got a yellow thing in it that floats on top of the oil and is easily visible, so you can monitor the oil level through a window on the left side.  Or through the even larger window on the back, if you live in the USA and your license plate is too small to cover it.  

There's a bracket on the right, to hold the RMV, which is a syringe-like thing that meters out the oil.  Here's a photo from that side, so you can see it mounted on the bike:



Note the yellow tube sticking out, top and center.  This is the tube you use to fill it.  It pivots to hide in a little compartment, and the license plate bolts over it.  You take the license plate off anytime you need to fill it.  According to the instructions, that would be every 4000 to 8000 miles.  I plan to just top it off every time I change the oil in the bike.

The arching yellow tube runs from the reservoir to the RMV.  The blue tube that comes out the bottom of the RMV and loops up and around into the tail of the bike, is the tube that goes to the dual injectors and applies the oil to the chain.  The black tube that comes out the top of the RMV and goes into the tail of the bike, connects to a vacuum port on the carbs, one of the spots you would normally connect the mercury sticks to when you synch the carbs.

There's a dial on the top of the RMV.  At one end is prime, and the other end is the slowest possible feeding of the oil.  When vacuum is applied at the top, the valve opens, and oil starts feeding out the bottom of the RMV.  The oil in the RMV is replenished by oil that siphons over from the reservoir - it's important to prime that hose by getting it free of bubbles.  The fill hose at the top of the reservoir doubles as a vent.

The kit came with a half liter of Scottoiler oil.  This stuff is blue, and according to their literature it is water soluble.  I decided to test this claim.  I squirted some on my fingers and tried to rinse it off in the sink.  It's not that water soluble.  It didn't feel like it rinsed off my fingers very much at all, even with hot water.  But hand soap did seem to cut through it a little more easily than it cuts through motor oil.

The instructions recommend that once you fill it up, you prime the hoses by running the bike to get vacuum, and using the Scottoiler fill bottle, push air into the fill tube, which pushes oil from the reservoir to the RMV, and this pushes oil out the bottom and into the feed tube.  Personally I would prefer not to sit sniffing the tailpipes of a running bike for that long, so I used some of the extra black hose to run from the top of the RMV, to my mouth, and applied vacuum that way.  And I used my Mityvac to apply pressure to the filler hose, because it was kinda awkward using the Scottoiler bottle to do it.  It took about ten minutes to push the oil all the way through the tubing.

One I had the lines filled with oil, I put the vacuum line back in place.  I started the bike with the dial still set to prime, and oil came out both sides of the dual injector.  Yay!  I then adjusted the dial until oil came out at a rate of about one drop per minute.  Seems to work!  I'll take a test ride tomorrow in daylight.