so much oil... dear god

So... i have a pretty, fully rebuilt motor with outstanding compression: 155 each side. brand new amals that seem like they were dialed from the start. starts on the first kick, every time (well... almost). I got it started and was beyond ecstatic. took her on a couple of tuning rides and everything seemed fine. Aa little bit of oil burning but thats to be expected as the some of the assembly lube burns off. let it get good and hot and then let it cool so i could re torque the head. after setting the brakes and the clutch, I went about five miles to this diner and ate there with a friend of mine. on the way home he flags me down and say that I'm burning a lot of oil. When we got to the stoplight i looked down and it was all over my leg and down the side of the bike, all over my brand new paint.
The oil is gushing... well spraying really from the front left of the head gasket. weird, so i retorque again and it get better, until the bike gets hot. then its everywhere all over again. fouling up plugs within 5-10 min. so brought it home, and it sat for about a month. pulled the head off and replaced the copper gasket with a new one. The good news is, no more oil spraying everywhere... the bad news is, I'm still fouling up plugs in 15 min, to the point where the bike rides like crap and won't idle. what gives? oil pressure gauge is showing 45psi or so when under power, around 15 ish at idle. There really isn't any more leaking, which is good... but i want to RIDE IT. Any suggestions from you knowledgeable gents? i cannot think for the life of me what this could be. my next step is probably valve seals (Why the hell i didn't do it when i had the head off is beyond me) but other than that I'm at a total loss

Yes could be valve seals now hard as rock. I replaced mine recently for the same reason. Kibblewhite type.

What piston rings? I had some Hastings one pc. (Oil) rings in a Trident, they gushed oil like a mofo. Changed to 3 pc., all was well.

Oil drain hole in head gasket verified correct, yes?

yeah i checked the new head gasket when replaced. i used a fiber flame ring gasket and ditched the copper gasket. The new one definitely had the oiling hole, i didn't look that close at the old one, I'm pretty sure after looking at it some one beat the sh** out of it with a hammer. Unfortunately, i bought this bike as a basket case with a rebuilt motor. supposedly some reputable work, but I've learned to stop trusting people, especially after the condition of the old gasket. I probably should have started over to begin with. I know that it had never been run on the rebuild when i got it, it had new pistons installed, i checked before i bought it and could see the new shiny pistons through the plug hole. i don't however, know what rings were used. compression was solid on both cylinders.

Well I think you probably already know the head and barrels need to come off and check the piston to wall clearance before just installing new rings. You'll want .045" clearance. If the "new" pistons are standard I'd check the bore taper. If .020" over or such, it's likely the barrels were bored to fit but still look for .045". Guide seals for sure are needed but I don't honestly think even no seals would cause the kind of oil problem you're experiencing. Here's the part that can be kind of contentious among forum people. If the bores are fresh and the clearances right, have a look at the oil control rings. If three piece ( expander in the middle with two thin scrapers on either side), see that the expander has not been cut down a bit to ease installation. This greatly reduces side pressure of the oil control ring system on the bore and can (will) cause oil consumption. Usually the expander ends will be colored. For example red on one end, green on the other. This is to ensure they are not overlapped when installing the scraper rings. In other word when installed on the piston you should see red and green, not just red OR green. This will also be an indicator on whether they've been operated on. Of course all this is just conjecture at this point. You'll have to do some mechanic-ing to get to this point.

mschlake21 said:

So... i have a pretty, fully rebuilt motor with outstanding compression: 155 each side. brand new amals that seem like they were dialed from the start. starts on the first kick, every time (well... almost). I got it started and was beyond ecstatic. took her on a couple of tuning rides and everything seemed fine. Aa little bit of oil burning but thats to be expected as the some of the assembly lube burns off. let it get good and hot and then let it cool so i could re torque the head. after setting the brakes and the clutch, I went about five miles to this diner and ate there with a friend of mine. on the way home he flags me down and say that I'm burning a lot of oil. When we got to the stoplight i looked down and it was all over my leg and down the side of the bike, all over my brand new paint.
The oil is gushing... well spraying really from the front left of the head gasket. weird, so i retorque again and it get better, until the bike gets hot. then its everywhere all over again. fouling up plugs within 5-10 min. so brought it home, and it sat for about a month. pulled the head off and replaced the copper gasket with a new one. The good news is, no more oil spraying everywhere... the bad news is, I'm still fouling up plugs in 15 min, to the point where the bike rides like crap and won't idle. what gives? oil pressure gauge is showing 45psi or so when under power, around 15 ish at idle. There really isn't any more leaking, which is good... but i want to RIDE IT. Any suggestions from you knowledgeable gents? i cannot think for the life of me what this could be. my next step is probably valve seals (Why the hell i didn't do it when i had the head off is beyond me) but other than that I'm at a total loss

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First I would be checking the crankcase breather. A blocked engine or oil tank breather will make those symptoms. Jim

Biscuit said:

Well I think you probably already know the head and barrels need to come off and check the piston to wall clearance before just installing new rings. You'll want .045" clearance. If the "new" pistons are standard I'd check the bore taper. If .020" over or such, it's likely the barrels were bored to fit but still look for .045". Guide seals for sure are needed but I don't honestly think even no seals would cause the kind of oil problem you're experiencing. Here's the part that can be kind of contentious among forum people. If the bores are fresh and the clearances right, have a look at the oil control rings. If three piece ( expander in the middle with two thin scrapers on either side), see that the expander has not been cut down a bit to ease installation. This greatly reduces side pressure of the oil control ring system on the bore and can (will) cause oil consumption. Usually the expander ends will be colored. For example red on one end, green on the other. This is to ensure they are not overlapped when installing the scraper rings. In other word when installed on the piston you should see red and green, not just red OR green. This will also be an indicator on whether they've been operated on. Of course all this is just conjecture at this point. You'll have to do some mechanic-ing to get to this point.

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I'm sure it's just a typo and you meant .0045"

triumph2 said:

I'm sure it's just a typo and you meant .0045"

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Ha, not a typo exactly, more like a brain fart over how to type four and a half thousand'ths in numbers.

thanks for the advice guys. I'm going to check over all my oil lines again to make sure everything is set correctly, and make sure my breathers are good. Comnoz i have your crankcase breather installed, seems to be working well, but i don't know about the oil tank breather. if nothing changes, i guess the heads coming off, clearances are being checked, and seals will be replaced!

Make sure your head isn't getting filled with oil from having the rocker shafts in the wrong way round also check the drain hole in the head, gasket, and barrels is clear to allow the oil to clear the rockerbox.

mschlake21 said:

thanks for the advice guys. I'm going to check over all my oil lines again to make sure everything is set correctly, and make sure my breathers are good. Comnoz i have your crankcase breather installed, seems to be working well, but i don't know about the oil tank breather. if nothing changes, i guess the heads coming off, clearances are being checked, and seals will be replaced!

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One other thing, I found a couple sump plug breathers that had the wrong seal washer with the banjo fitting. It was too large to drop down into the counterbore where it bolts to the breather's cover. This caused a leak.

If you received the sump plug breather with the banjo fitting in a separate bag then this is a real possibility. If the fitting was assembled to the valve when you received it, then the fit has already been checked.

And when you have a leak under the motor it ends up on the front of the barrel and head. [believe it or not] Jim

update for those who are interested. i checked all oil lines, all are correctly routed. oil tank breather is unobstructed, crankcase breather is working well. i have leaks all over, but i expected that after getting it running, but it does make it harder to do diagnostics. for some reason the spin on filter mount leaks like a sieve... ill probably just replace the whole unit because its a lot of oil coming off of that thing. tightened down the timing cover and it quit leaking too. the reason i mention this is because that original head gasket was leaving oil all over the primary. i kept getting oil on my boots and would go looking for oil, it just seemed odd to me because it had switched sides... now i have oil everywhere on timing side. isolated that oil to timing cover and the tach drive, its gushing oil so i need to put new seals on that. head gasket is dry and leaks solved.
Now, as for the smoke. before i pulled the head off, i wanted to take one last run at retorqueing to see what that would help. retorqued the head and found the bolt between the exhaust valve covers and over the pushrods to be very loose. got everything torqued to spec, and there is a MASSIVE improvement with smoke production. i did 40 miles (on a single set of plugs!) or so trying to encourage the rings to seat. just light smoke on idle now. still just the right cylinder and only when hot. pretty sure its a valve seal so i suppose i have to get that handled. when i looked through the intakes there is a pretty good amount of oil on the intake side of the valve on the right. I'm guessing thats indicative of valve seal issues. thats the longest a set of plugs has lasted for me, they look like a nice brown on the plug but with oily residue around the edges. that much better than completely blacked out in 10 min. I'm guessing the combination of the head torque and the valves created my issue. seemed like rings because it was still smoking when under way, but was much worse at idle, but now its simply light smoke at idle or low throttle, up to about 1500-2000k rpms

These Kibblewhite seals are the Cat's Meow. So soft. Like butter.

One oil leak can look like many!

A head gasket leak can easily lead to oil burning (via oil from pushrod tube or oil return hole getting into the combustion chamber.

As common says, wind from riding can lead to oil getting into strange places and having the appearance of many leaks.

So... IMHO... don't jump into a strip down just yet. Unless you know what's wrong, how do you know you won't rebuild it with the same issues !?!

Composite head gaskets require a very careful run-torque-repeat procedure (plenty of threads to search on this).

Hunt down your leaks one by one and see how good you can get it.

And don't worry about the burning oil until you've put some miles on the thing and given it some beans to allow rings etc to properly bed in and for all that oil you've been passing through the combustion chambers and into your exhausts and silencers to properly burn off.

A step-by-step approach is your best bet in such cases. So "Keep calm and carry on" as they say !

You could make up a blanking plate and seal up the revcounter drive temporarily, rev counters don't tell you anything you don't already know unless your clutch is slipping. They are a direct ratio to what is being shown on your speedo.

Fast Eddie said:

One oil leak can look like many!

A head gasket leak can easily lead to oil burning (via oil from pushrod tube or oil return hole getting into the combustion chamber.

As common says, wind from riding can lead to oil getting into strange places and having the appearance of many leaks.

So... IMHO... don't jump into a strip down just yet. Unless you know what's wrong, how do you know you won't rebuild it with the same issues !?!

Composite head gaskets require a very careful run-torque-repeat procedure (plenty of threads to search on this).

Hunt down your leaks one by one and see how good you can get it.

And don't worry about the burning oil until you've put some miles on the thing and given it some beans to allow rings etc to properly bed in and for all that oil you've been passing through the combustion chambers and into your exhausts and silencers to properly burn off.

A step-by-step approach is your best bet in such cases. So "Keep calm and carry on" as they say !

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My first post was about pulling the barrels may have been a bit previous. Leaks aside I was focusing on the quickly fouling plugs and jumped to conclusions. That said, I agree exactly with all of Fast Eddie's thoughts. Very likely the engine was assembled and none of the jointing surfaces were re-torqued. In the case of the composite head gasket, initial torqueing, even going around twice will not hold good torque. We found in the shop that leaving the engine overnight would apparently "set" the gasket. Re- torqueing in the morning reveled all fasteners needing more "twist" to reach correct torque. So you can imagine if this was never done in the first place how lightly torqued the head would be after several months of sitting. Is this an 850? The oil filter mount would have to be cracked or have damage to the filter sealing area to leak. There is no direct path of oil to the engine through it and no gasket. The two oil lines only are it's feed and return supply to tank.

The two steel tubes on the oil filter mount are pressed into place into a crappy zinc alloy casting. A prime place for a leak. Needs a proper engineered threaded tube and sealant IMHO

gripper said:

The two steel tubes on the oil filter mount are pressed into place into a crappy zinc alloy casting. A prime place for a leak. Needs a proper engineered threaded tube and sealant IMHO

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+1. I had one of those pressed in tubes come out once! Luckily I spotted it in the workshop being very loose. Coulda been a different story had it come out whilst barrelling around Gerards...!

i plan on pulling all leaking components tonight. I'm going to follow ya'lls lead, get leaks under control first, when it stays dry see if my head oiling is still at issue.