Always something... Gas in oil & stuck oil filter bolt

Seems like things just get more interesting... 82 XJ650 Maxim

Condensed history: Bought bike last week, battery dead, would not start. Tank near empty, 90 miles put on bike in the last 5 years. Owner bought it for his son who wanted a different bike. Said his sons mechanic friend had rebuilt the carbs. I cleaned the tank, added New gas & gave battery charge & it ran rough but ran. Discovered #2 cylinder would not fire but was getting a good spark at plug socket. Saw evidence of oil on air filter. Bought new plugs but #2 still not firing. Bought seafoam to add to gas to hopefully clean out carbs.

Now to today...

Go to where my bike is being stored, have oil, air & oil filters with me. Remove tank, remove rubber intake hoses to air filter so I can see if anything is visually unusual in the carbs during operation. I transfer most of the gas back to gas can and add seafoam to what is in the tank. Bike is on stand & running, sounds like there's some intermittent firing of #2. Begins to even out and in amazement I saw a steady river of oil/gas pouring out of the air filter, over the driveshaft and down the stand (intake hoses were not reconnected at this time).

I shut off the bike & checked the oil & it sure enough was mixed with gas and the mixture was coming out of the crankcase. I then discover the petcock is not working and the gas is eternally able to flow. Perhaps this explains the little mileage over the last 5 years and why the tank was low when I bought it.

So obviously I need to deal with the carb issue and thoroughly drain & replace fluids & hope the engine/transmission has not been damaged by this exposure to gas.

So I go to loosen the oil filter and some genius has used the wrong driver size and has rounded off the bolt head on the oil filter and it wouldn't come off with Vice Grips when I tried that. So that bolt is still in place and I have to get that old oily gas soaked filter out of there. No telling how old it is, 5 years anyway.

So... I'm going to try using larger vice grips tomorrow and Auto Zone sells a set of sockets that act like an external easy out. If those don't work I going to have to dremel or grind off the bolt and try to do more work to get the shaft out of the engine block.

Any other ideas on this, what I can do to get that stripped nut off of there??

As to the gas getting into the oil, I'm hoping it hasn't damaged the clutch or engine internals. Is there something I should add to the oil that would benefit the clutch plates at this point or is the gas not likely to interfere with them?


As to the carbs... I had been thinking about rebuilding them but I'm thinking if there's someone who rebuilds carbs beautifully and would use mine as an exchange, I'd be interested. I'd rather have a good job done by someone who does them all the time than for me to experiment & see how well I do.

Any suggestions on who I might contact?

So now to find replacement petcock rebuild kit and carb intake manifold hoses, I see all 4 on this bike are cracking.

All this in less than a week, most interesting discoveries I wasn't expecting.

S'all good.

Thanks,

Gary

 

Gas in oil... could be a leaky petcock. if the valve is leaking while you have the bike parked. Common.
Oil cover bolt... also common. Definitely get a new one. To get the old one off let the bike be completely cold. Try it at the coldest point of the day, like early morning. Use the biggest vice grip you can fit over it. This only might work. Worked for me. My bolt was completely round. Vice grip would just slip. Decided to let the engine cool overnight and try ing the morning. It worked. If that still fails... a tedious way to do it (but one that works) is take a rasp and flatten two side of the bolt as much as you can to give the vice grips a better grip.

As far as carbs... you gotta go for it. With these bikes you really have to get over your fear. There are a lot of carb specific threads here, carb clinics, with photos, and a lot of time put into write ups. I am the same way, dude, but really, you are going to find out that there are things on these bikes that are standard pains in the asses. You can't pay someone to clean the carbs every time they are dirty. You'll spend a lot of money. Valves are supposed to be adjusted every 5000 miles. I'll put that on a bike in a month. A shop would charge $300 or more. The bike is old, if you don't want to spend thousands, seriously... thousands of dollars on getting some more glory out of it... trust me... do it yourself.
Say you are right in the middle of tearing apart your first carb for cleaning, inspection, and rebuild. You have a stuck drain screw. Happens all the time. People here... a lot of people here... will help. Ask every dumb question in the book if you have to. It's your bike and you want to know. People here are VERY cool about lending the knowledge they've gained from these bikes. People who have had it figured out since before internet forums. Just do it exactly how they do. Buy your parts from chacal. His catalog is here in the forums. You wont ever get screwed, he specializes in XJ... not only selling the parts, but he knows these bikes.
Trust me... do it yourself. You then know how to do it from then on, it costed less, and you know whats going on. You aren't the guy who had other people wrench your bike. I made that mistake and I am done with bike shops. Done with other peoples hands in my stuff. Nobody will take care of your bike for you the way you will. The only good I got out of a shop so far was a brake system overhaul and upgrade. Bought the parts from chacal, chickened out on doing them myself, spent over $700 at the shop.

 

Once you get that oil filter bolt out, replace it with an aftermarket one, EMGO have one wuth a much larger head, less likely to strip, and DON'T overtorque it, what usually happened to the old ones...

 

Chuckles makes a lot of good points... Do the work on the carbs yourself it's not rocket science, all it takes is time and a little belief in your abilities. Regarding the gas in oil, you might have a stuck or sticky float valves or the float heights are set incorrectly. Search clear tube method for float adjustment. Good luck!

 

Chuckles,

You're right of course, I do need to learn how to do the carb work myself. Thing is I haven't done work on carbs in a long time and it would be really helpful to watch someone do the process. There's no magic, it's all been worked out long ago & it's a mechanical process; I just know I dislike re-inventing the wheel if there's a well understood method I don't know.

What I need to do is get these working well as possible ASAP and to that end I decided I'm going to try seafoam in the existing carbs for the short term and I'm getting a set of carbs from a parts bike and will work those over at my own pace and as chacal has explained in his excellent tome on carb repair. When done, I'll put them on the bike and then rebuild the others the same way.

Thanks to you, well said. Thanks to the others who commented as well.

Gary

 

regarding that oil filter bolt - chacal carries a spin on oil filter adapter kit - might wanna consider replacing the old oil filter system with that. i just did mine and install was a snap and i'll be glad to not have to mess with the oil filter housing anymore.

 

A quick note about the intake manifolds: they all crack, eventually. Unless the cracks go all the way through, there is no need to replace them. Pack the cracks with black RTV or paint with liquid electrical tape.

The bolts that secure the intake manifolds to the head can easily be broken off during removal, so replacing the manifolds is something that is generally done only out of real necessity.

About the gas/oil mix in the motor: Change the oil, of course, then change it again in about 200 miles. DO NOT add SeaFoam to your oil.

THINGS YOU NEED TO DO IMMEDIATELY:

Check your rear brake shoes for delamination. Very common occurance on these bikes and can kill you. DO NOT ride the bike until you have looked. http://xjbikes.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=15874.html

REPLACE front brake fluid; plan on hoses soon and eventually a caliper and master cylinder rebuild. You may discover these get moved up the list on their own...

Valve check/adjust. Often ignored, essential for long engine life. http://xjbikes.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=14827.html

Inline fuel filter. Also before you run it any more.

Attend to the fusebox, or you may NOT run it any more.

Get a service manual, and go through the "maintenance" section, leaving NOTHING out.

Any short cuts or neglect of any of the above will eventually bite you, trust me.

Do it all, carefully and methodically and the results can be very rewarding.

Welcome.