Hi I just bought an atv and being the newb that I am...I put in air cooled 2 cycle engine oil in my liquid cooled engine(2001 Polaris Scrambler 400) .

As soon as I realized that air cooled oil existed and it wasn't suppose to be in my engine I siphoned it out and replaced it with the proper oil. The atv lost a lot of power but seems to be getting better now that it has the proper oil into it.

My questions are How bad did I screw it up? Should I take it to the shop?(even though I really dont want to just got it back last week put $700 into her and waited three weeks) Also seeing that I just got her back last week & only put 10-12 hard hours on the quad should I even have had to be adding oil so soon?

thanks in advance.

 

I never heard of seperate air-cooled and liquid-cooled engine oil. Just 2-stroke pre-mix or injection oil.

P.S. Welcome to the forum Billy.

 

Don't panic. Just run it and it will clear itself. Just use the oil that the manufacturer says and it will be all hunky dorie.

 

Almost ALL 2-stroke oil you find today is TCW3 rated or higher and can be used in air cooled,liquid cooled,injector pumps or premix applications. Atvs,watercraft,weed eaters,etc! Difference in oil is either dino based or synthetic and some oils even say "smokeless" operation which if were true would burn a two stroke engine up! They all smoke,the "smokeless" just a little less! I've had more than one customer just use WallyWorld oil in the gallon jug or even Pennzoil.Just try to stay with the same oil. In a high performance,high compression 2-stroke race bike engine(such as the KTM's we sold) I would say use the best synthetic available,but in the 250,300,350 and 400 Polaris engines I wouldn't be afraid to use even the old Golden Spectro "air" cooled oil in the oil tank!Even on the bottle it said for premix or injector operation! The only negative I've ever heard is don't keep intermixing different oils as some may not be compatible with each other?Don't believe you hurt anything unless it was hurt to begin with!! OPT