Bought myself a 2005 Heritage with 15000 miles. After reading a lots of posts regarding cam tensioners, I decided to take a look at them. Upon removing the cam cover, I noticed both front and rear tensioners have about 1mm (.025") of wear. I guess I'll be ok for a while.

So the question here is that since I needed to remove exhaust pipes to open the cam cover, I notice white deposite on the exhaust port. See photos. What are they? Is it normal? I searched forums but found nothing.

Front cylinder

Rear cylinder

 

Taking a swag here, but that looks like its been running really hot and lean. Possibility of low-grade gas too.

But I'm an EVO guy, maybe TCs just run that much hotter? Does the bike have aftermarket pipes?

 

Well, if that were the color of your spark plugs then I would say that it was normal. Every exhaust port that I've seen has been black with carbon. In my opinion it looks to be running a little lean. Also with the discoloration on the push rod tube, this might indicate excessive heat.
I guess the best thing to do is to start at the basics. Fuel delivery, Air intake and exhaust.
You might want to post this in the TECH SECTION. Lots of good stuff there.
Best of luck.

 

Yes both spark plugs are of the same color: white and not glassy brown. Based on the paper work, the bike has SE stage 1 air cleaner and re-mapping. Pipe is replaced with Cycle Shack MHD-137T slip-ons.

Bike is running good so far (2 months). Maybe I will put back the stock exhaust and see what happens.

 

It looks normal to me. Thats what they look like when you are runningat or around 14.5 afr

 

Looks like running lean or too much timing. You might want to pull the heads and look at seats and valve faces.

 

Mine at 30K or so looked like yours except it was black. I do a lot of mixed 50/50 round town/55-60 driving. If had just got of a 100 mile run at 60 bet they would look the same. Do not think its has anything to do with quality of gas. My plugs are sort of like that. Do know that unleaded gas builds up and only gets so thick because of flake off. Looks normal to me and it will stay about that thick till valve seals get old and worn and then it will look thicker and blacker due to oil build up.

 

saved this link for ?'s like this...

http://www.dansmc.com/Spark_Plugs/Sp...s_catalog.html

 

When I run Sonoco CAM2 purple racefuel in my GSXR it will turn the whole exhaust a white powdery color on the inside. Just like yours. Here is my theory. With regular nasty gas, A slight rich burn will give you the black powder build up of all the burnt impurities in the gas. A leaner burn is actually even burning up more of the impurities so you do not see as much carbon builup. In CAM2 or other more refined fuels you do not have the same impurities and you are left with a white greyish residue.

If you havent had any other type of fuel then I don't know what else would cause this.

I have ran them extremely lean and they dont look like that. The plug tip will have small white dots on them from were the piston is actually vaporizing and extremely small pieces of the piston are sticking onto the plug.