Oh dear... Take these symptoms and...

[northwind]

...tell me what's the cheapest likely cause

Just aborted a ride today due to a load of oil down the side of the engine- it's an 00 so it has the seperate clutch cover, and most of the oil seems to be from there. But, it's not just near the bottom, there's oil splash all over the water pump cover too. I did have the clutch cover off a few days ago but it's not been leaking at all since that.

But, naturally as soon as I saw the leak, I checked the oil before returning home, and it was suspiciously high. I added oil the other day on the way home from the AR as I have a small persistant leak from the rear cam chain tensioner, but I'm sure it wasn't past the full marker. When I returned home it seems higher again- though I'm not going to say 100% that this is the case, I checked it more carefully here than in the petrol station as at the time i was just checking to make sure it wasn't too low.

So, oil levels rising- you suspect petrol past the rings or coolant in the petrol, right?

The dropped oil looks pretty thin, no obvious petrol smell, no obvious water contamination "yoghurt" but it's cooling down now so I'll have another look once it's cooled

Throw in a couple more symptoms- yesterday, it was running a little hot in what were not hot running conditions- the fan came on while stationary for a couple of minutes which is very, very rare, it wasn't hot here.

Also a random loss of power on the way home while filtering on steady throttle, exactly like fuel starvation- I thought for a moment I was out of fuel but it quickly stopped when I returned to idle. This might just be a seperate "weird thing".

It's not lupus My first instinct is just to take off the clutch cover and reattach with a wee bit of hylomar to give it a solid seal, and see if there's anything else going on, but obviously I'm concerned about the possible rising oil thing. I've not checked the coolant levels for a while, so if they're low that doesn't neccesarily tell me anything but I'll be doing that in a minute anyway.

maybe someone pee'd in your oil

Otherwise, I would suspect petrol, but then you would have poor consumption right? and lack of power.

If there is water, take a sample out and let it settle, it might seperate into two layers?

Matt

[northwind]

Whatever it is, it's just started so poor consumption wouldn't have showed up yet (I think this may actually be the most range I've had from a tank in fact, it's been all motorways so it was up to 140 of my miles to the flashing light, which is about 150 regular SV miles)

Mhh, does oil and water seperate? I suppose it should.

yea it will; oil is non-polar, water is polar. It should seperate if there is alot of water, but might not if ther isnt alot of water

Matt

If there was alot of water though, then there would be alot of condensation when cold-starting?

[Biker Biggles]

Head gasket?Pressure build up in crankcase resulting in oil leak?Have you looked in the airbox for oil,and are the breathers still in situ?

Coolant in the oil will cause the oil to appear milky, really easy to see. Does not take a great deal of water to do this, I have seen it a lot in cars and trucks.

Gasoline will just thin out the oil, but will evaporate quickly on the outside of a moving bike. Possible stuck float in one of the carbs or a bit of dirt under the float valve?

To really check for gas contamination you just about have to drain the oil out, you can smell it then.

I had my Katana engine fill so much with gas that it hydro-locked the engine when my yougest son switched the fuel petcock to "P" (prime) thinking he was shutting it off like on older bikes. Drained the fuel tank into the engine.

Please let us know what you discover.

[yorkie_chris]

Ring blowby won't put petrol in the oil, it'll drop the oil level by blowing more oil mist out of the breathers if anything.

Options are head gasket, water pump gasket.

You need to take a look at your coolant and see what's floating about in it.

If the oil isn't milky, then we can rule out water from the off can't we

So it is petrol.

If the rings were worn enough to let petrol past (to any great degree) then they would be worn enough to let oil up .... i.e. it'd be smoking like a trooper and using oil ...

So its the carbs overflowing and the petrol going in the breather ...

either that or you have made a machine that makes oil out of nothing and have solved the worlds oil problems!!

[northwind]

Hmm. It's totally cooled down, and no apparent yoghurt in the oil (ie, emulsified water/oil) which would seem to say, no coolant. But as YC say, it shouldn't really be petrol- petrol can blow past a broken ring but not in these volumes.

So... Having had a bit of time to think, the most obvious conclusion for that does seem to be that I've screwed up, and that maybe the bike was at more of an angle than I thought when i filled the oil, and just overtopped it. I may have been having a bit of a flap when I posted this I'm going to treat it as a loose clutch cover for now and see what happens.

[northwind]

OK, now calmer Sorry about that! A long run up north turned into a limp-home-worrying-about-what's-gone-wrong, and my brain ran away with me a little.

So, I've sorted the oil leak- hopefully. I dropped out some oil while I was at it and though I couldn't smell petrol (and there was definately no water) it seemed thin- and after a couple of hours, it's no longer as thin. So, that suggests petrol. Now, I'll admit here that I might be making mountains out of molehills with the oil levels but that does bother me a bit. There's a bit of oil in the airbox but not enormous amounts.

Thing is, if it was a stuck float, that ought to be apparent at other times- the bike starts normally, and doesn't seem to have any performance issues at all apart from the very brief power loss I mentioned. And this is probably the most miles I've had from a tank of petrol in 2 years.

So... Still not sure what's going on. I'm going to carry on riding and see if anything else comes out of it, I do think it's possibly all in my head but then again, there's a few things pointing in vaguely similiar directions.