| Author | Message | ||
     Tankhead |
My bike has had a history of a mysterious oil leak. Needed to put an embarrassing amount oil recently. This is the second time this has happened. 2.5 quarts. Valves tapping four miles from dealer. He did not give an estimate on cost for diagnosing. No standing oil on my garage floor. No noticeable crud in the exhaust. No blow back into the fan. No visible oil on the lower jug base or gaskets. I am assuming no rocker box gasket problem either.  The oil is lower than the rear jug base. The pic is of the transmission vent tube, is that normal to be out like that? Where do you think the oil is coming from. I just changed the primary oil yesterday. A quart came out so no leak there. NO visible signs of oil higher than at the crankshaft case.  | ||
| Portero72 |
I had this same issue. It was not the tranny vent line. If I recall, it was the starter motor seal. | ||
| Portero72 |
Also, if there is no oil dripping onto the floor and you had to add that much, your engine is probably burning it. | ||
| Pontlee77 |
I remember using syn3 my bike was using a hell of a lot of oil now i run castrol and no such issue. | ||
| Tankhead |
ALWAYS used Amsoil. Had to add Syn3 at the dealer last weekend. I will check out the starter motor seal. | ||
| Teeps |
Clean, dry, then powder the area... Then ride, ride ride until the powder starts showing wet. Then time for taking the bike apart. | ||
| Tankhead |
Tried to clean the area with s100 but did not do well. Amy suggestions for cleaning the oily dirty area? | ||
| Tankhead |
someone responded to this on another forum. Has anyone heard of this problem and would it take from the engine oil? I thought it would take from the primary but what do I know............ not much. see below.... oil showing there on my 09 was the vent fitting being loose.quite a few other members with 08-09 have had that problem.the rubber vent line also melts on the header and needs to be rerouted on some of the 08-09. | ||
| Teeps |
I would get after it with brake or electric contact cleaner. Brake cleaner might damage the plastic or worse the belt. Probably would be a good idea to remove the belt and the plastic bits. | ||
| Rwven |
I've got the same leak. I don't believe it is motor oil because even when it leaks so bad it's dripping on the ground my oil level doesn't go down. I'm thinking it's the starter seal myself. I fill the primary from the small chain tension inspection port after draining the primary. I do this with the bike on the side stand. I just pour in the quart of oil, is it possible that the primary is getting slightly overfilled because I'm not getting all the old oil out because I'm draining it on the side stand? | ||
| Bpt |
I had this issue on my 08. It was the stator plug. It goes through the inner primary area just forward of the starter. Before you rotate the engine pull the primary cover and check the wire and grommet where it goes through the housing. Mine was loose. I sealed it with black silicone after a very thorough cleaning with brake clean. No leaks since. | ||
| Tankhead |
NOT THE PRIMARY OIL> Always low on ENGINE OIL> Just sayin' | ||
| Portero72 |
Again, if you had to add 2.5 qts and see no drippings on the ground or otherwise, you likely have an oil burning issue, as well as the seal back there leaking. | ||
| Pontlee77 |
Rwven, The bike should be straight to drain a bit more the primary, and maybe it's a bit over filled, maybe you can rest the bike against a wall or use a piece of wood under the side stand to put the bike nearly level, or better still have some extra hands to hold the bike. | ||
| Crusty |
It might be a bad crankshaft seal. Engine oil will go into the Primary case, and when it becomes too full, it'll blow out the transmission breather. I had that problem on both of my tubers. It's pretty easy to tell if engine oil is in with the primary oil. Primary oil usually looks pretty clean when you drain it. If it's black, it probably has some engine oil mixed in with it. Changing the crank seal is a fairly easy job. | ||
| Tankhead |
OK this is very frustrating. The jugs are dry. DRY. NO oil on the lower seal or the metal around the area. On the crankcase halves come together and the primary vent tube on the upper floor of the crankcase halves is oil moisture. So I can only imagine that the vent tube fixture has to be tightened (which I can not get to with an open ended wrench without taking all the tubing around that area out) or the gasket between the crankcase halves is shot or the bolts need to be tightened. Can this be costly for a mechanic to fix it? What kind of labor costs would this be about? | ||
| Panhead_dan |
I had a leak that drove me nuts half the summer one time. In fact, it looked a lot like your pics. Turned out to be the seal behind the front sprocket. Cheap and easy fix but hard to diagnose. (Message edited by panhead_dan on January 23, 2013) | ||
| Natexlh1000 |
So the oil would come out along the shaft and get flung up and away from the sprocket? Tricky. | ||
| Panhead_dan |
Indeed it was! | ||
| Road_kill |
I have an '08 Uly with a similar problem. Never a drop of oil on the ground or obvious oil consumption issues but a messy tranny and little grime on top of muffler. Under warranty, the dealer put an additive in the oil that glows under black light. After a few months, they inspected and found, for me, it was not engine oil. They replaced the starter gasket. This worked for about a year. During a subsequent engine rotation, I replaced same gasket again. Today, two years later, same messy engine. I recently used a pressure washer and "carefully" cleaned the engine/tranny. Then, as suggested above, lightly sprinkled powder around suspect areas. Drove bike a few weeks and used a hobbyist borescope to seek out the culprit. To my surprise, the start motor gasket was holding and the stator plug area was dry. The top of the tranny, vent area, and right side of tranny are messy. Should have checked sooner to verify it was not the crankcase split line. I have a new tranny output shaft seal ready to go in. Point is, the starter gasket, stator plug, and vent port, and tranny output shaft seal are ALL prime suspects. I'm thinking of attacking all of them because I'm convinced they take turns pissing me off. Besides, at 45k miles, my bike simply wants more of my attention. If this does not fix the problem my plan is to keep oil levels good, keep the pressure washer at hand, and ride the hell out of the bike. When the engine craps, I'll take that engine out and have a real close look. For your bike, I feel the oil consumption issue is key. As Crusty states above, the crankshaft seal may be letting oil past and out via the tranny vent. I've seen this twice before on HD engines. Not common, but ... | ||
| Panhead_dan |
Seems like they do this just because they want a little love... Just like a woman. | ||
| Etennuly |
I had exactly the same problem with my then new '05 City-X one time. I put a full syn 20-50 oil in it in mid summer(hot out). In less than 300 miles of riding 2 quarts disappeared. No leaks, no smoke. I was shocked to pull into my driveway to an oil light that just came on, even more so to the fact that it took 2 full quarts to get it back up to the proper level. It was the first time I ran a full syn oil. It was the first time I ran 20-50 in summer heat. I switched back to HD 60W non syn - dino oil for the temperatures recommended in the service manual from then on. It never lost any oil again with no other changes or repairs. In my '06 Uly I have been running Rotella 15-40 for diesel engines. It has been on this stuff from about 30,000 miles. Now at about 60,000 it is still doing great on it. Oil loss is consistently at about a half pint per 2500 miles. | ||
| Bobbuell1961 |
Chris(Tankhead) stopped at the dealer i work at to drop off a set of bar end( i did a polish and they look great, thanks again) he said the bike was noisy, i checked the oil, none on the stick, added 2.5 quarts. I had a brief look at the bike, the starter area looks no worse then mine, starter leakage, rocker is relatively dry, pipe is not at all oily. so it's not burning excessive amounts. "I just changed the primary oil yesterday. A quart came out so no leak there. NOT THE PRIMARY OIL..It might be a bad crankshaft seal. Engine oil will go into the Primary case. "So I can only imagine that the vent tube fixture has to be tightened (which I can not get to with an open ended wrench without taking all the tubing around that area out) or the gasket between the crankcase halves is shot or the bolts need to be tightened"............... The engine vents though the rocker boxes so any engine oil would not be present on top of the transmission, loosing 2+ quarts of oil will make a mess, the oil went somewhere or was not there in the first place. I would love to have a closer look, Bob | ||
| Tankhead |
UPDATE:: I cleaned up the engine somewhat with engine cleaner. Let it sit for about 7 minutes and then rinsed it all off thoroughly. Let the bike idle for 10 minutes and then rode it down the road and back. The bike has not lost any oil since the refill at the dealer (100 miles). I will do another clean again tomorrow on the back side of the engine and try and wipe off as much debris as I can get to. Then I will powder the top of the case and hopefully see the leak. | ||
| Portero72 |
Check the oil level on the dipstick every 100 miles(running) until you get a clue as to whether or not it is burning oil. | ||
| Tankhead |
Will do, thanks | ||
| Glenn |
BobBuell, If you added 2 1/2 qts, you had none in the case to start with! Make sure you didn't overfill it. You'll soon have oil dripping from the airbox if so. | ||
| Tankhead |
Glenn, BobBuell was the dealer mechanic who helped me out while I dropped of some free bar ends. He did mistakenly over fill but syphoned some back out. The bike, four miles from the dealer, had the oil light go on and the motor started to sound like the valves were tapping severely. I new that the oil level was going to be low. Sure enough it was. That was the second time that has happened to me since ownership. No visible signs of Rocker box gasket leaks (old stain but not fresh). We shall see. Gonna clean the back part of the engine again today. | ||
| Tankhead |
Checked oil after I warmed it up from de-greasing after rinsing. Oil dip stick filled to the top of the second X from the top. Got helmet on drove it around 3 miles came back. No measurable oil on the XXXXXXXX stick but just barely visible on the bottom of dip stick. WTF. I know people here will say you should have rode the bike more before checking the oil but I find it very frustrating to not be able to check the oil in a bike at any given time. | ||
| Tootal |
Tank, How are you checking the oil? On some bikes you need to check it hot with the bike idling. That's the only way to get a consistent reading. I always thought my bike was using oil until I started checking it this way. |
