Oil leaking from exhaust ports, what does that mean?

There is a noticeable amount of oil below, and around, the exhaust lock fins after a ride on my bike. I believe I read that means bad valve guides, huh? The bike does not smoke under acceleration or anything, are there any other tell tale signs of bad valve guides? And what would happen if I let it run like this?

Not necessarily bad! I rebuild my head, new valves/guides and machined the cylinders to 20 Tau with new pistons. Put it all together and...... Smoking like a Cuban sigar. As well as oil dripping out of the cylinder nuts and exhaust. Kept on riding and eventually (about 1000 miles) the rings "settled" and all is clear now. If your valves/guides logged many miles, it might be that you need new ones. If it was just redone, keep riding till the road wears out and it should clear.

72Fastback said:

There is a noticeable amount of oil below, and around, the exhaust lock fins after a ride on my bike. I believe I read that means bad valve guides, huh? The bike does not smoke under acceleration or anything, are there any other tell tale signs of bad valve guides? And what would happen if I let it run like this?

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Could be oil leaking out of the pushrod tunnels. My bike throws oil on my right leg and down the right side of the bike. It flies off the fins above and below where the head and cylinders meet. I am pretty sure it's leaking out of the headgasket from the pushrod tunnels. There have been a few threads on this topic. Bad valve guides should cause you to burn a lot of oil but I don't see how that would cause oil to leak out of the engine.

Same

On my road bike it was the drive side exhaust that had oil around the exhaust rose. When I stripped the bike I found the guide going up & down with the valve. I also noticed that more oil pocketed in the tappet cover on that side as the channel to drain the oil to the pushrod tunnel was not such a good shape as the timing side.
Chris