Hopefully you are correct, there's no reason to touch the oil line when installing a big bore kit, it's a base gasket up job that can be done with the motor in the frame. It is possible that the previous owner did more than just the installing the 1250 kit, something that required the removal of the motor from the frame.
An east way to tell is to have a look at the clips that hold the oil lines to the oil tank, H-D use Oetiker clips as below than require pincers to crimp them. Most owners simply replace the Oetiker clips with Jubilee clips that just require a screwdriver or a 7mm socket to tighten them.
If the Oetiker clips are still on the oil lines, chances are the lines have been undisturbed.
I know the guy who did it, he didn’t take apart any oil lines. Also I was under the impression there are no umbrella valves after 03. I will be replacing the after market rocker box covers with the stock ones. When I get them off maybe I will see if there’s any differences? I will look up the schematic for the oil lines too and see if those are right.
Thanks rob! Great tip about looking for the clips. They are still there and intact also I know for a fact the motor did not come out of the frame.
Thanks guys for all the input.
I know nothing about Sportsters. That being said, on the Big Twins it is very easy to flip the rocker box gaskets thereby blocking an oil drain back hole that results in similar symptoms. Is it possible to do this on a Sportster?
On the clips used on the oil lines it could be the correct ones were used but not the tool to pinch them together. If the top is not flat then it was probably done with pincers or similar so not a HD installation.
So just to confirm, no oil lines were removed for this build and this was not a problem for this bike before the 1250 kit/chrome rocker box upgrade.
Also Oil was being shot out of both breathers.
I have the rocker box covers removed and the breather valves are on the correct sides(intake). The mesh inside the valves seems pretty new but I am curious as to why they are different colors. Also I noticed a slant on the breather valves, they are not symmetrical. Maybe they need to be switched? The black one was on the right side. Could it be possible the rocker boxes housings are switched? Or like QC said, the gaskets were switched blocking an oil drain back hole? Anyways I think my next move will be to get the bike on the stand so I can rotate the motor to find TDC and remove the the rocker box assembly’s.
I think the breather valves are in the correct locations, light brown on the rear (left side, in your photo), black on the front (right side, in your photo).
After scratching my head as to why I couldn’t stop the oil squirting out my breathers I decided to take it to a shop. Turns out the wrong cam plate gasket was used and that created a passage way which in turn made it unable to build enough pressure to pump oil back to the tank. Shop said they found like 5 quarts of oil in the bottom of the motor. After the correct gasket was put on, the oil leak stopped. So after riding the bike and breaking in the new motor it was running killer. I then ran into another issue.
While pushing the motor on the freeway pretty hard it started spraying out of the breathers again for a period of time. The bike before the build had about 60k on it, coupled with hearing some top end chatter on start up I’m thinking it’s time for a new oil pump as well. Could it be it isn’t able to return oil to the tank as quick as it needs to due to the large increase of horsepower from the build? (Port and polished heads, Andrew’s N4 cams and S&S 1250)
Other than that it’s running like a raped ape and with thunder header pipes is louder than my FXDX 95” with the same pipes. Leaves my ears ringing after a longer ride.
Thanks for the help guys.
06-25-2023, 12:28 PM
