mike horvath wrote:This may sound elementary, but might the oil be seeping out around the cylinder head side covers? Oil will tend to collect on the plug base as well as weep onto and drip from the header studs.
Just my thought.
Mike
Cure for oil leaks from head?
Re: oil leakWhat ya mention may be it however HONDA heads of this design will leak oil and HONDA suggested the flat punch around the spark plug area method to stop it but I don't recall it working for anyone. .........lm
Mike H,
Excellent point. I had that problem years ago on a motor that I had forgotten about. In theory the cams always go in far enough for that not to be a problem but on that particular motor there was a stack up of tolerances that left a 10 thou gap for oil to seep out of. Thanks for the reminder. And the fix is simple. Take of the end caps, file off a few thou and bolt them back on (after cleaning of course) I have peened (sp?) in the metal and it helped a little but it is not a cure as LM has pointed out. You may be lucky though.
If you have the Bill Silver Guide, he has a copy of a 'Bulletin' that Honda issued to dealers concerning this very phenomenon. Basically it says that it's really no big deal and that it's really not going to cause any problems, except maybe to make your fins dirty, and to just wipe the oil off every once in a while. Don't know if this is necessarily applicable/helpful to you, as you mention that you're using your bike for the track as opposed to the street.
I have this happening to my bike, and with over 16,000 miles of riding (street) my CB77, it hasn't caused me any problems (I'm knocking on many pieces of wood here!). I had asked Ed (LM) about this a few years ago, and he told me that it wasn't a widespread problem at the time the bulletin was issued.
In the case of the head I had which leaked at the spark plug area.
Not only was oil there it sort of bubbled at the area when the head was at temp. I spent more time attempting to cure this the HONDA way than I did replacing the head. Just my experience many years back. ...............................lm
Vince- I won't throw out this head, but will use it for my Yetman street project. If I can ever get to that.
Many of the tracks have oil checks at pit-out and pit-in and the oil on this head almost never makes it to pavement, it just moisturises my leathers! But they check carefully and I figure it's better to change it now while there is time rather than force the marshalls to boot me. It would be a hard reputation to shake off. The sidecovers could certainly be a contributor. There was enough dampness behind the points cover to compromise the grounding of the points plate. Both the sparkplugs and the points arms sparked when I checked timing just before pulling the motor. But with the oil on the front of the head as well as the sides and pooling arount the spark plugs I think it's the leaky skull syndrome.
Ed - Any idea if there are any long term risks/possible future damage from just letting this oil seepage/leaky skull situation be?
Ya would need to check the oil level often but other than making a horrible mess back in the fins I don't know of a mechanical problem. .............lm
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