The Finished Product
Behold, the finished product! After a few weeks of ironing out some kinks I installed the Maier quater fairing today to complete the project.The kinks consisted of a minor head shake and persistent oil leak. The head shake was easy, just tighted up the steering stem. The oil leak was another matter.
I couldn't see the actual leak when the engine was running but there sure was oil on the stator cover after a short ride. It first looked like the oil was running down from the left side of the valve cover so I replaced the valve cover gasket with a rubber Real Gasket piece. Very nice, reusable rubber gasket but that didn't solve the problem.
Now I'm thinking it's got to be coming from the head gasket so off comes the head, new head gasket after a very careful cleaning of both surfaces and bolt things back up. Out for a test ride and I still have a $#%&$#@ oil leak!
OK, must be the the cylinder base gasket so the next weekend the whole top end comes off...again. All surfaces meticulously cleaned, new base gasket,new o-rings, new head gasket, proper 3-stage torqueing of all bolts. An entire Saturday but now everything must be OK. Out for a another test ride and IT STILL LEAKING!
I pull off to the side of the road and rev the engine to about 5K and look at the left side of the engine. Yikes! There's a little fountain of oil squiting up from where the stator cover meets the cases. Back to the garage, drain the oil and pull the stator cover. There's a 1/16" piece of old gasket that I missed when I pulled the cover off to polish it.
Cleaned the surface, new gasket, bolt things back up and out for another test ride. Finally, no leak. Man, did I feel stupid. A couple of seconds of carelessness cost me at least 12 hours of unnessary work on a perfectly good engine. At least now I know that the engine should never leak oil and I got real familar with how the thing is put together.
Anyway, today I did 100 miles, and all is well. The bike runs great. Tomorrow is a 110 mile poker run and in three weeks and friend and I are going on a 1000 mile round trip ride to Niagra Falls. If I get through that without any problems, I'll feel confident that the project is really complete!
posted by BJ @ 5:38 PM
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