I'm a new Harley owner and it's also my first bike. Was checking the air filter and found oil in the bottom of the intake. The lower portion of the filter was wet, it looked like a KN filter after you oil it. The bike is a 2016 slim with 5,000 miles and a stock air filter.
Is this normal?
Something to worry about?
Please help. Thanks David

 

more or less normal. happens more often (to me anyway) if you fill the oil above the bottom of the ok mark on the dipstick. I'm changing to an external vent on my air cleaner to keep that junk out of my intake.

 

Not unusual at all. Pull some oil out of it, clean up the excess and ride it. If it still gets oil in there take out some more. Repeat if needed until you find the right level on the dipstick that works without blowing oil.
Good suggestion to vent to atmosphere. You don't need to put that oily hot mess back into the motor. It'll run cleaner and will reduce carbon build up in the combustion area.

 

101 Harley Davidson performance projects talks about about solutions in its evo book. It's a cheap book on Amazon used. You can run a catcher from the breather bolts or a drip line but that could cause back pressure. I've heard of people opening the rocker box and drilling out the oil drain down hole one drill bit size larger then it is now.

My bike started getting more and more oil out the breathers and known I have a knocking sound in the front cylinder. Not sure if it's related but I bet it is. If it's excessive oil coming out of the intake it could be blow by of some kind. Most hd bikes vent oil mist through the breather bolts and many intakes force that into the filter. make sure you don't get too low on oil and keep track of oil loss when changing oil. Consistently losing the same amount is normal in my option.

 

this is an ole wives tale, i never seen any definitive proof that running the bag at factory recommended levels will cause oil in the cleaner. oil must lube, clean and most importantly cool and running less oil removes valuable heat sink. i never run low and you will not see oil in my cleaner.
the BIG issue is LAZY flow from the heads ports. if you deal with flow, then the oil issue goes away. some just dump to atmosphere (epa issue) but there are better ways. in fact, hd should come up with an internal way to deal with c/c vapor, not like it isn't out there, plenty of mfg's use it in many forms.

 

I have never understood why folks want to run oil levels lower than the what the factory recommends from proper lubrication and reasonable oil temps. Although this is a common issue, most deal with it by drilling the drain hole in the rocker arm support plate to .125" and venting the breathers to the atmosphere. If the problem is such that oil rather than vapor is escaping, some employ an inline catch can which must be drained from time to time. Both my bikes are vented to the atmosphere without catch cans and never leave a drop on the garage floor after being ridden hard for 300 or more miles and I always make sure the oil level is sitting on FULL.

 

A lot of the posts here are telling you how to correct the issue of a little oil in the air filter. These posters obviously know a lot more about these issues than me. I've always been told that it is absolutely not a big deal to have a little oil in the air cleaner. Why would you go through all that trouble (drilling, catchers in breather bolts) if it is no big deal?

 

I bought a new bike so I could learn to maintain, repair and modify it as I enjoy ridding. Looks like my journey has started. Thanks for your opinions and experience everyone.

 

Most of these TC motors have some oil mist blow by the rings which results in oil in the air filter. Motor oil and the crankcase mist that finds its way into the air filter interferes with the air intake and generally make a mess; some worst than others.

The main reason to vent breathers to the atmosphere is to remove the crud, i.e. the vapor that contains oil mist, that will be otherwise sucked into the intake and baked to the top of the pistons which is not desirable to many of us. Maybe not a big deal to some but to those of us that have invested in performance motors, keeping that crud out of the motor is the motivation; a personal choice.

 

it is lazy flow!!
1. piston down stroke causes increased c/c pressure
2. pressure makes its way to the heads, separator channel and out the umbrella valve
3. still under pressure, it exists the head port. this port acts like an orifice.
4. what happens when you pass a high pressure from an orifice??
A: the flow MUST accelerate to pass through
B: after the orifice, the pressure rapidly decreases as it expands
C: as it expands and drops pressure, any particulate will will fall out
5. if the throttle plates are almost closed, the volume of air movement is not enough for the intake to pick up and so the mist drops to the floor of the air cleaner.
6. if we direct the lazy flow to the highest flow area, then the mist is picked up.





there is nothing wrong with burning blowby, matter of fact, it can be helpful. not if you engine is crapola to begin with, you need to resolve mechanical issues, dropping to the atmosphere is not allowed in all 50 states. can you do it sure, until you get caught in states that look at these things, till them, ride on bro, grease up our high ways? ever went through an oil slick??? not pretty!!