alright this is a long post......very long......but here it goes.....I am sorry it is so so so long....

1999 FXR2

It seems I have been chasing oil leaks since I bought this bike....are evos just about this or do I have a bad bike? I have two twin cams and I have no issues....but I get this evo....and it's one thing after another...it's really starting to become discouraging!!!!!.....perhaps this isn't the best time to post....it feels so raw right now....yah know what I mean...ok here's what's going on....

1999 FXR2 purchased in may of 2005....I have had the bike for 632 miles, currently the bike has 6,072 miles on it....upon arrival from riding the bike home 307 miles from where I purchased it I discovered an oil leak on my driveway....well all of that led to discovering the rear rocker box was weeping, along with some outer primary leaks, as well as discovering that I also had a leak occuring at the inner primary starter jackshaft oil lip seal, so I replaced it, and also replaced both the main shaft oil seal and the inner primary housing o~ring....while I was in there....pretty much at the same time I replaced all of the rocker box gaskets for both cylinders.....after which I put 37 additional miles on the bike with no leaks....thought I was home free.....and explained the oil leaks away as, you know dried up seals as the bike didn't have that many miles on it...you know that sort of thing....UNTIL TODAY.....

Start the bike up....a buddy is with me....I seemed to believe I was hearing an air noise....you know something a bit different but not enough to make you do anything about it....I did notice it enough to have my buddy listen but he didn't hear anything so...I thought nothing of it.....we got on the bikes and took off....ok perhaps its best to let you know before I ever take off on the bike...I allow the bike to warm up until I feel a slight warmth in the top of the rocker box without my glove on...as soon as I feel that...then I drive very conservatively for the first 10 miles...that's how I was taught to treat my twin cams so I treat this one the same way....went about another 30 miles doing so very hard going up some twistees through the mountains....and stopped for lunch.....got off the bike and checked it real well and no issues....went another 20 miles and let my buddy ride the bike....still no issues.....everything was clean....go another 40 miles and no problems......then I begin to feel the bike running a bit differently.....when I stop at a light....it's one of those feelings where you just feel the bike is going to die....you know that sound.....give it a little gas and there is a delayed reaction then it responds one of those things.....it was during these last 50 miles that everything seemed to become very different.....I finally was concerned enough about the response I was getting, so I put the bike on a country road and I slowed the bike down to 40 miles an hour in 3rd gear at about 2600 rpm.....so not lugging the engine....and you know, similar to being in a city...where you hold your hand on the throttle and you can feel most everything.....and then it went from being smooth to where it would have these slight little hiccups where you could feel the slightest roughness in the engine you know those slight hiccups where you feel like no gas is getting through to the carb....the closet thing I can relate it to is like when you have to move your petcock to reserve because you need to go to reserve...of course I had a half a tank so that's not the issue....and again it wasn't as strong a feeling as that is when you have to rotate the lever of your petcock...but you know how the bike misses.....anyway.....it was doing that at exactly that speed.....when I went up in throttle no issues at all....

Then I got to this stretch in the road where it is very isolated the bike seemed to be running again at a speed of 65 normally...and so I wanted to put the bike up to full throttle....it

 

Sorry to hear the problems you're having with the bike, sounds like a rocker box gasket gone out. Did you have them apart at all? As far as the air noise, the only thing that comes to mind is the breather gear in the nose cone may be out of timing with the engine. It's like setting up a timing gear with the dot on the gear that has to be timed to the engine. It has to open at a specified time when the piston comes down to eliminate pressure in the crankcase. If you say you are doing cams, this is the first think I would look at when you open up the nose cone.
Good luck with your diagnosis.

 

A 6 year old bike that averaged 1k miles/year. That's abuse! I would pull both cylinders, heads, and rocker boxes completely. Clean all the sufaces, check them for true, and put all new gaskets. Check the breather timing like TC sed.

 

I'm having similar issues with my bike. It's a 95 FXST that I bought a couple months ago. It only had 5400 miles on it, around 500 miles per year! I've put over a thousand miles on it since I bought it and I've sprung a couple oil leaks because the seals, I'm sure, dried out after sitting around for so long.

I'm taking it in this week to have my front rocker box gaskets replaced as they are leaking now!

 

What I'm wondering is since you are by-passing the carb/plate oil-vent, do you have enough flow (line size) for proper venting or maybe the vent line is pinched somewhere. It just sounds like you were'nt properly vented and when you did the high speed run the excess pressure blew the gasket. Just some thoughts.

John TN

 

I want to make sure you all understand where I seem to have an oil leak and this "air leak" I believe at speed this is where the oil "spewed from......but I am not sure.....it would make sense that it did....and it's definitely where air is escaping....but I physically didn't see oil come from here at idle.....perhaps it does it only at speed.....is that when the oil get's pushed up there at speed?

right above the front exhaust header....you have your rocker boxes....the air is wooshing out of there on each stroke....it sounds like one of those old billowing bags that you would use to start a fire with does that make sense....woosh woosh woosh.....

The location is the right hand corner....between the "bottom? of the Top Rocker Box Cover and the "top" of the Rocker Box Cover Spacer.....<~~~that's how the parts book describes the part....it's really the Middle Rocker Box Cover the persay sandwhich. obviously it must be that rocker gasket OEM #17356--92.

Ok so here are a couple more questions and reflections:

1) Do any of you know the "exact" james gasket part number that is a one piece gasket which replaces the oem # of 16778-84B & 17042-92A which affixes to bottom of the Inner "Bottom" Rocker Box Cover and the top of the cylinder head.......Apparently there is a Sportster gasket that fits also this and is a one piece instead of the two pieces?????? My independent mechanic told me about it after I had already purchased my gaskets from them and installed them....and why his counter person didn't bring it out to me when I was purchasing them I have no idea....

2) http://www.directparts.com/ccp/ccp_main.html <~~~~this is a website for a product called the "cure" I installed it in my top rocker box covers....there are basically two products for evos they are the "cure" and "cure vent plus" I installed the "cure" and so I contacted the person who invented the product and wondered if I should install the "cure vent plus" because of my problem here.....and what I was left with was his suggesting doing a "leak down" test....you can read about what the "cure" does as well as what the "curve vent plus" would do as well.....so now about the leak down test????

3) He basically talked about doing a leak down test checking to see what the cylinders were doing....so my question is how far do I take this or was this just the off chance that gasket didn't get seated correctly....and blew? I mean he went into all of these "things" and all I wanted to know is if his "vent plus" system would be a better product than the simple "cure"......he was talking about boring the cylinders and going 10 1000ths over and perhaps putting in new pistons in....

4) Ok another question as one of the suggestions was made to check out the cylinders and so forth...ok when you take those off do you have to have torque plates to reinstall everything back to "perfect" so essentially what "special tools" are we talking about to check.....

Anyway as you can see as anything with these motorcycles the "what ifs" can take you down a path that is at some point finite but can feel endless.....I just want a bike that doesn't leak....and is that too much to ask for???? And I would love to know what happened to cause the problem I am currently experiencing....

Thanks for the posts so far guys.....this is definitely one of those puzzles....

And I will check that vent tube and see if something is wrong there...

"Classic"

 

The leak down test is to determine if you are getting any pressure into the crankcase venting from engine compression.

If you have the crankcase properly vented you will always have air/oil mist coming out/in of the breather heads. It's when you are not vented properly, you have more volume pressure buildup from piston downstroke than you do coming out of the breather head vents, this builds a lot of pressure, the excess pressure has to go somewhere (path of least resistance) and starts to blow oil, fillplugs, seals, gaskets etc. If you get a lot of oil out of the breather vents at high speed, the oil and air cannot seperate fast enough causing an oil mist to be vented but does'nt blow gaskets, just makes a mess. You have about 50 downstrokes per second at 3000 rpms, this gives you an idea what kind of pump action you get from the piston downstroke compression to the crankcase breather vents. You might have another issue besides the crank vent like the breather gear Skip and TC mentioned or a possible gear case vent plugged, bad umbrella valves ( they don't function very well for long), that's what you have to determine by process of testing to find the problem.

Look at this link, scroll down to crankcase breathing, he explains this a lot better than me, on the cure deal and enlarging the oil drain vents.




http://moneycentral.communities.msn....ypix/tow3.msnw

 

Hello....

I thought I would note a big 's up to James Genuine Gaskets.

If you followed my post "OIL IS EVERYWHERE ANY IDEAS" in July then you are aware that I have apparently blown out my front cylinder's rocker box cover gasket and what is known as OEM HD# 17356-92 the upper rocker box cover gasket. The OEM# 17536-92 the James part # is JGI 17356-92 and the drags specialities part # is DS-174419.

I called James Gaskets to talk with them about this and they have stepped forward and are sending at no cost their part #JGI 17042-92-X which is also Drag Specialities part # DS-173316. This kit provides everything you need to do the job such as all the gaskets to do both cylinders, includes 2 umbrella valves, and also SOMETHING THAT IS FAIRLY NEW that perhaps some of you do not know about.....

The cylinder gaskets that normally come from Harley in seperate right and left gaskets.....which for my bike (FXR2) are OEM part mumbers # 16778-84B & 16779-84D and are made of a very very thin paper, no one seems to use them anymore most are using the 2 metal James Gaskets. Of course Cometic Gaskets is making a singular gasket that works and replaces the need for two gaskets....but if you want to be a James Gaskets "fan" then perhaps you don't know that:

For the past year James Gaskets has been making a singular metal gasket part # is JGI-16779-99-X and the drag specialities part # is DS-174203. I would assume if you are doing rocker boxes you will want to do them all so the key part # JGI 17042-92-X and the Drag Specialities # is DS-173316 which were mentioned above as a "kit" part number.

I just thought James Gaskets did a very nice thing.....and they are even sending me a "call tag" and UPS is going to pick up my old gasket so they can look at what caused it to blow out.....So how is that for a positive....mean while my independent dealer where I bought the gaskets to begin with was willing to simply sell me another $65.00 worth of gaskets.....and was not aware of the "newer" singular James Gaskets <~~~and since I had not installed the new umbrella valves when I did the rocker gaskets a couple of weeks ago and because of the problem I am experiencing with the front cylinder I thought I might as well do both the rocker boxes over and get them right with the new umbrella valves as well.

The cost to me both times has been only the parts, as the labor I am personally doing.....so hopefully the problem was just something freakish with the gaskets.....I suppose this will let me know soon.....

The person at .James Gaskets that I dealt with was very nice and pleasant to work with and HELPFUL....and I didn't even expect the offer and it was made to me......which I thought was GREAT!!!!!! So I thought I should pass it on to you all...and also let those of you thinking about Rocker Box Gaskets know that they certainly are standing behind their product...and also to let you know that you can get that "singular" cylinder metal gasket if you desire to....

OK NOW FOR A QUESTION:

James Gaskets also now makes a Cam Cover Gasket made of metal with paper facings on 2 sides and is .036" thick and has a bead which apparently has better torque retention.....my question is would you go with this gasket the part number is:

OEM# 25225-93B The James Gasket Part # is JGI-25225-93-XM and the drag specialities part# is DS-20112093

or James also makes the gasket but in paper and it's .31" thick....

So I am wondering of these two which one you would choose?

Regards,

"Classic"

 

James gaskets are great gaskets. I believe HD is using them to replace some of their gaskets. It's a real nice thing that they are sending you the set on them, goes to show a good company that stands behind their product.

If you are taking the cam case cover off, why not use the better gasket from James with the bead?