Hey!

Just bought a 1200 04 sportster, with about 8500 miles on it. It had sat for a bit over a year, since the owner had splurged on a Dyna. Rode it home 250 miles, all fine it seems..

..Whoopdidoo, next day I discover a curiously oil-ish looking stream going down the primary cover. Doh! It's coming from where the shifter goes into the primary, and isn't absolutely huge.. Maybe 1/2-1/3 of an inch wide.

First of all, what the hell? Isn't oil just basically getting splish-splashed around primary, not thrown against everything with huge pressure? Otherwise the primary's totally fine, how is it even possible to have a leak there, of all places? On a four-digit mile, three and a half year old bike? >.<
Anyways, since most of the time I can't really wrench my way out of a wet paper bag, would any of you have a clue into how critical solving this is, and how to go around doing that? Pull the whole cover off, disassemble the shifter and fiddle with a seal?

Also, when somewhat cold, the bike seems to have a tendency to backfire a bit, when cruising along at a pretty constant rpm. Doesn't happen too often, but it is quite unnerving, as the power basically disappears for 0.2 secs, along with a pretty loud pop.. If it backfired in the pipe, there shouldn't be a noticeable loss of power, right? So.. The bike's happily blowing stuff up in the carb? It's got SEII pipes, air cleaner and jet kit, which I suspect are the murderous bastards behind this plague.

Thanks for the help

 

I'm not too familiar with the newer Sporties, but the pre-rubbermount shift seals were pretty easy to replace. You would remove the shift arm from the shaft, pry the old seal out with a small screwdriver, tape up the splines, and install the new seal. I usually tap them in with a deepwell socket.

Your backfiring problem could be a small air leak that's sealing itself when it warms up. Check for leaks in the vaccum lines and the intake seals.

 

Go to your local hardware store an buy a O-ring that will fit tight on the shifter shaft. Remove shifter an slide O-ring against seal an put shifter back on. Did this to my 02 Sportster I had an no more leak.