Once again thanks for all the kudos re the finished bike and thanks to all who have commented here. Much appreciated and very flattered to win BOTM!
A quick little update. No pics I'm afraid. After Christmas I went for a great ride to one of the local Sydney beaches for breakfast and coffee. During this ride a huge oil leak developed which I had a little trouble tracing the source of however it seemed to be coming from up around the head somewhere maybe between the head and the cam box. Anyway, I thought I'll just get home and sort it out then. On the way home, two things happened. First is that while accelerating hard up a steep hill the crankcase breather tube blew out of the breather bottle that I had made for it to vent into. Second, I ran out of petrol!! Luckily I was only 400m from home so I managed to get home without too much trouble.
Family holidays meant I didn't get a chance to look into the problems until last week. First I cleaned all the oil off the outside of the engine and started the bike up again and revved it pretty hard but couldn't find any source of a leak. So I was at a bit of a loss to explain why it had leaked so much on my ride. Then I remembered the breather tube that had blown out of the collector bottle. I figured that the tube would only blow out if it was under a lot of pressure and it would only be under pressure if the bottle itself was not venting to atmosphere. If the bottle was not venting to atmospheric pressure then the increased pressure in the crankcase may be causing the oil leak. So I disconnected the vent tube from the engine and blew into it by mouth with the distal end still inserted into the breather bottle. I couldn't blow into the bottle because there was an airtight seal where the tube went into the bottle. This meant that the crankcase, vent tube and breather bottle were all one enclosed, confined space with no venting to atmosphere. When I had installed the breather bottle, I had drilled the top of the bottle out to accept the breather tube. By pure chance I drilled the hole just large enough to accept the breather tube but not large enough to allow any leak around it. This meant that when accelerating hard the crankcase pressure was building up high enough to force oil out, probably around gaskets.
It was an easy fix...just drilled a few holes in the plastic collector bottle and filled the bottle with some sponge to soak up the oil mist. Problem solved! No engine pull down required. Who would have thought such an innocent thing could cause such a big problem?? Lesson learned...the crankcase breather does actually need to be vented to atmosphere!!!
A quick little update. No pics I'm afraid. After Christmas I went for a great ride to one of the local Sydney beaches for breakfast and coffee. During this ride a huge oil leak developed which I had a little trouble tracing the source of however it seemed to be coming from up around the head somewhere maybe between the head and the cam box. Anyway, I thought I'll just get home and sort it out then. On the way home, two things happened. First is that while accelerating hard up a steep hill the crankcase breather tube blew out of the breather bottle that I had made for it to vent into. Second, I ran out of petrol!! Luckily I was only 400m from home so I managed to get home without too much trouble.
Family holidays meant I didn't get a chance to look into the problems until last week. First I cleaned all the oil off the outside of the engine and started the bike up again and revved it pretty hard but couldn't find any source of a leak. So I was at a bit of a loss to explain why it had leaked so much on my ride. Then I remembered the breather tube that had blown out of the collector bottle. I figured that the tube would only blow out if it was under a lot of pressure and it would only be under pressure if the bottle itself was not venting to atmosphere. If the bottle was not venting to atmospheric pressure then the increased pressure in the crankcase may be causing the oil leak. So I disconnected the vent tube from the engine and blew into it by mouth with the distal end still inserted into the breather bottle. I couldn't blow into the bottle because there was an airtight seal where the tube went into the bottle. This meant that the crankcase, vent tube and breather bottle were all one enclosed, confined space with no venting to atmosphere. When I had installed the breather bottle, I had drilled the top of the bottle out to accept the breather tube. By pure chance I drilled the hole just large enough to accept the breather tube but not large enough to allow any leak around it. This meant that when accelerating hard the crankcase pressure was building up high enough to force oil out, probably around gaskets.
It was an easy fix...just drilled a few holes in the plastic collector bottle and filled the bottle with some sponge to soak up the oil mist. Problem solved! No engine pull down required. Who would have thought such an innocent thing could cause such a big problem?? Lesson learned...the crankcase breather does actually need to be vented to atmosphere!!!
turns out, after i calmed down, that the tachometer drive in the tappet cover, the "delete plate" i had made, id never torqued it down, so oil pressure built up and pissed oil out from the hole. The oil spread all over the motor giving me the illusion that it was coming from the normal places the CB's leak from. I was so relieved! phew! hahahaha, the small things in those situation get overlooked more than we think ;D
