Ahhhh. . . This is the same story I told with my '89.
I'd have it looked at. You can have it re-ringed for pretty cheap. $300 or so, all told. Riding without proper oil, or oil presure is going to cost more in the long run.
How many miles? Does the oil light come on?
Also, one way I found to figure out if your rings are bad:
Start the engine, let it warm up and get the RPM where they should be. Then take the dip stick out (I know it sounds crazy). If your rings are cashed (as mine were), the RPM may jump way up. That means that it is sucking up air through the crank case and you've got a ton of blow by. Also, put a table spoon of oil in each cylinder and check your compresion.
I hope it goes well with you. I'm about a couple days away from finishing a complete re-build. Hope you have better luck than me. . .
Time for some new rings and pistons, what do your plugs look like, are both sides buring oil or just one?
Well since it is an 89 and it is white smoke it's probably bad rings. Its not a real hard job to do, I did it on my 1980 honda cb900 4 cylinder. Since the bike uses oil so fast you might have to replace other parts in the engine as they might not have gotten oil sufficiently. Its probably just a ring job though. I dont really ride my bike above 7k unless i am accelerating and I usually dont shift much higher than 7k. Its just to buzzy for me to ride and it seems pointless to me to "cruise" around over 7k rpm's. Thats just me. Hope this helped.
My 48K 89 was using a quart of 10W40 in 300 miles or less ... It never smoked though ... but if it has power and doen't foul out plugs drive it and fill oil in it. Big deal ... ride the thing till it wont go no more ...
Cool.
Srinath.
only a big deal if it can't hold oil preasure. it would last longer if it were fixed.