Maxim 400 oil leak into cylinder - see pictures

The bike: 1982 Yamaha Maxim 400. 14K on the clock. So, I had oil leaking into cylinder 1, and fowling the plug within a few minutes to the point where it wasn't igniting the fuel/air mixture. I was surprised, just because it blew 134 & 137 psi early in the restoration, so I didn't expect engine problems. I damaged my Motion Pro leak down tester, so while it was in the mail get fixed, I decided to pull the head, figuring I'd be doing this regardless. Once the exhaust and carbs were pulled, I looked in, and couldn't see any oil on the valve stems (I've got the right part?). Once I pulled the jugs off, I could see the oil by the intake valve of cylinder 1:



Cylinder 2 is nice and dry:


Here's the whole head, with gasket still on:


The gaskets get ripped when pulling things apart, so I'm unclear how I can figure out where the oil leak was. Am I correct is saying that it's not the rings, because then I'd have more oil throughout the head, and it's not leaking valve guides/stems because I couldn't see any oil on them prior to pulling the head, so it's the head-to-cylinder gasket that was leaking?

 

The head-to-cylinder gasket IS the "head gasket."

The cylinder-to-block gasket is the "base gasket."

I still wouldn't rule out a leaky valve stem on intake #1; however from the above pic it does appear that the head gasket has been leaking into #1 from beside the cam chain gallery.

Kind of interesting that you pulled the head and cylinders together and then separated them; most folks would have just pulled the head first.

 

Yeah Fitz - that only happened because I was alone when pulling it off, and the base gasket gave first. My mistake is that there was a lot of sand and crap sitting at the base of the crown nuts, and all of that fell down the rods. Some of it got into the engine. Bad thing. I'll just run some oil through it before I reassemble everything and hope it gets what little did slip in.