Royblueboy, I would BY ALL MEANS drain some oil until you "see the light"   in the oil level window.

Put the bike upright with something big and thick under the side stand so that she stands as vertical as possible.

14mm or 17mm oil plug on the left, real close to where side stand is attached... loosen until oil trickles out, collect it for whatever use you may have, util you see at least 1/16th inch light in the oil window.

Why am I telling you this ? Because I once overfilled (don't know how much, but definitely overfilled) and not only was the engine extremely sluggish, I popped the main block gaskets and the cylinder bottom gasket and oil wept all over the engine  , shoes, trousers, socks... feet   ... rear tire  ... and giggled its way right into my mechanic's wallet !!!  

You see, unlike automobile engines which have many cylinders, some pistons  going up, others down, so that the air capacity within the engine block is essentially the same all the time, the Savage is a BIG single, and when that piston goes down it compresses the air in the sump; if you overfill, there's too much oil and too little space for that air to compress, so it will force its way wherever is the way of least resistance...
...generally, with the weakest gasket...

So drain some of that oil.

Use it for... top-ups, fish bait, salad dressing, deep fry, whatever, but DRAIN IT !!!

Maurizio, smarter but poorer, from Rome, Italy.  

Some folks fill it till they can see some oil in the window when its on the stand. Some use a 2 X 4 to get it Almost vertical, then fill it up. Seems to be a pretty good amount that it can hold above the Factory Full Line. Id rather be a little over than under, but, as Maurizio points out, there IS a "Too Much". That costs less to fix than the "Too Little" line, tho.
When I was gonna be gone all day & run it pretty hard, Id carry a Weed Eater oil bottle so I could top off if need be,.
A 1/2"X3/4" x 4" piece of wood with a slot cut at the proper angle makes opening the oil fill while hot possible w/o pliers.

How about this

Get it filled up, so its to the Full line when the bikes standing up on level ground, lean it down onto a 2X4 & see where it is in the window.
Maybe put a mark on it? Then youll be able to get it filled up to where its sposed to be w/o having to hold it up & IF its not far from the full line & youre comfortable with it, maybe juice it on up. I Would, before I did that, look at the oil window while its running & immediately after shutdown to see is theres any foaming at all before I added beyond stock levels, then Id watch it afterward. Air bubbles in oil isnt a good thing,,

There is an individualized HOT TEST specified that takes in all bike modifications (RYCA or whatever) and it also takes in the thermal expansion characteristics of your particular oil.  

It is the definitive test you do to decide on the appropriate fill level for YOUR BIKE with YOUR MODS using YOUR OIL.

http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1312152619/0

jvdb wrote on 01/15/13 at 18:43:02:




I'm curious how much this is off for Ryca owners? Obviously the rake angle is changed, it seems like it might be easier to over-fill.


Seems to me it would be easy to run it low, because the engines oil requirements havent changed, but with a lower front end, its gonna Look like it has more oil in it than it really does. It would be like checking the oil on a stock bike with it pointed downhill. What happens when we ride down a long hill? Does the engine suffer damage because the oil is down in front? Noperz,, they built it so it could do that, right?
So, kinda hafta stop & ask ourselves, just what IS the Design Dictated, not Engineer spec, but the limit imposed on us by the design of the motor?

WE know that once its running & has as much oil up & outta the sump as it can get & oil is circulating, then its not anywhere near hitting the crank/rod. I think that as long as oil is below that line, its okay. Its Gonna slosh & its Gonna hit once in a while, but if its a steady beating, itll air up the oil & thats the end of it. It cant pump bubbles,,

Someone with a jug off, case on the bench, could do some measuring.
Hafta use some sense. The world aint flat. Take a Ryca, already nose down a bit & start down from a REally REally good mountain road & a guy mite get in big trouble, but some schmuck in West Texas on a bone stock Savage mite be able to safely carry enough more oil to help cool the thing a bit in that heat.

Oldfeller, with Rotella T6, what quantity of oil is correct?

If we knew the proper quantity of oil, at the next oil change we could see where it shows up on the sight gauge, and just use that as a reference from then on.  We could note what it shows when cold, and when hot, for both on the sidestand and on the vertical.

Gyrobob wrote on 01/17/13 at 15:59:31:



Good question -- answer is nobody knows what the "correct amount" of oil is because we have different owners manuals saying different things.  None of them are consistent and none of them consider oil expansion per se.

You have an oil shelf right over the top of the window and you want the oil to stay out of the rotating crankshaft, so the hot test requirement on your expanded oil is to show some air at the top of the window.

Beyond that, don't sweat it -- every time you brake going downhill you slop a bunch of oil up against your crank.   So it isn't fatal, just not something you want to do all the time.

Frothing      

Some oils froth, you need to quit using that oil if you find your oil does like to froth.   Froth is air laced oil and it doesn't lube like solid oil does.


In short -- do the hot test

Oldfeller--FSO wrote on 01/14/13 at 07:21:04:


Wow.. wish I had read this sooner... like 9 months ago. Yall are d'bomb

I'll take that $50 --- you just use the list oil check method and you can see if you have enough oil by just glancing down as you approach the bike.

No roadrunner (or tonto) neck bending plus you get the extra oil capacity to keep your bike from running out of oil so durn quickly as the Suzuki method can lead you to do when your bike gets older and starts sipping oil between changes.