I have a buddy that owns an old early 80s touring HD that has been pushing out base gaskets. The stealership and a local wrench have put several sets of base gaskets in it and it just keeps doing it. Hes really upset and cant get them to stand behind their work. He wants me to help him fix it and ive only worked on Evos and Twin Cams so im not too familiar with the Shovel. Im guessing its some sort of crank case pressure problem. Its either not venting correctly or maybe he has bad piston rings. I plan on checking the compression as soon as its in my shop. He can only make it 20 miles or so right now before it blows oil. Any body have any experience with this? Any ideas?

 

Shovel are simple animals if your doing evos you have no issues just need a couple of the weird wrenches or torque adapters for the headbolts & base nuts . Do a leak down test on her , fastest way to tell if you have rings or valve issues on one . If it's been apart several times already somebody would have noticed piston & ring problems by now even fresh meat from the school guys will catch it so I'd start looking over all the oil and breather lines for kinks or blockage maybe last resort would be the breather gear in the nose cone with junk in it . Some of the 80" shovels had an external oil return line on the cylinders , if this one had them and things weren't done right it will cause leaks .

Do not put paper gaskets back in , there are very good metal wafer gasket's for shovel's just like the later evos and twinkies , base & rocker box's both have been a continual pain for shovels and these will cure it

 

Is it stock or stroked? Excess case pressure should probably come out the path of least resistance i.e. the pushrod tubes.

 

Its pretty much a stock motor as far as I know.

 

Sometimes on a stroker you can build up the scraper plate too much. Not enough to grind but enough to keep pressure in. Unless it's been apart and the breather gear is out of time I'd look for a pinched vent or blocked drain.

 

Ran into some of those too have you ? A lot of the early S&S stroker kits didn't go in right by guys who had no clue and didn't ask . I hate following up on somebody elses build just for those reasons , you always have to take it completely down and start from square one .

 

copper coat

 

A lot of guess work and trial and error back in the day. I think I like that better than guys thinking it's an adventure to change their own oil.

Seems to me for a short while in the early 80s Shovels had a little drain tube from the cylinder base to the tappet blocks. I think I just tapped and epoxied a set screw in both ends on my '81. I wonder if this could be part of this problem?