Burning the midnight (motor) oil

By: Jeanette Tran

So the first chance that I got, my bike ended up over at a friend's garage and a few of us started to pull that thing apart. (Of course, do not try this at home on your own unless you know what you are doing.) We were all determined to figure out what was wrong with the bike and fix it in order to get the SV back up and running. Also, thank goodness for friends with nifty tools because we were able to look inside the engine without initially having pulled the engine apart completely thanks to my friend's Snap-On mini cam. He stuck the camera down into spark plug opening in the engine and took a look around. Unfortunately, we immediately saw oil all over in places where it should not be. So with that, we started to take apart the bike.

Since my bike had produced a white cloud of smoke out of the exhaust, not to mention leaking oil from the headers, he decided to pull the pipe off first to get a better look idea of the whole situation. As soon as he was able to disconnect the pipe, a nice trail of oil came spewing out of the pipe, all over the tools and floor beneath it. He quickly put the pipe back on and found a container and opened it back up again allowing for a nice steady flow of oil to fall out of the pipe. I was amazed at the amount of oil that was coming out from the bike.

After the pipe came off and oil finished coming out, the tank was then propped up and it was time to dig out the other parts in order to get to the engine. After the tank was lifted, the next thing off was the huge air box. Once the air box came off, something caught my friend's eye and he took a closer look at the opening below the air box. Upon further examination, he pointed out to me that there was oil on the butterfly valve openings. Now, why would there be oil there? Since the air box sits directly on top of it my friend decided to open it up to do some further investigating. The whole time, he was pulling everything off the bike in order to take a better look inside the engine to see if there were any broken seals or gaskets. After he opened up the air box, we saw that the air filter was soaked with oil, and the bottom of the case had a nice thin layer of oil settled there. After seeing this, it was as if a light bulb just went off above his head. With the amount of oil that came out of the exhaust pipe and all of the oil in the air box, he went over to the bike on its side stand and looked at the little viewing glass for the oil level. The oil level was at the high mark...I slapped myself on the forehead.

Considering the amount of oil that already came out of the bike, and the fact that the oil level was at the high mark on the little oil window, and bike still on the side stand practically told us that there was just way too much oil in the bike. Normally the oil level should fall right between the high and low oil level line markers on the bike. Not only that, but one would usually check the oil level of their bike while the bike is upright, not while it is on the side stand. Seeing that the oil level was already at the high mark while the side stand was still down, means that the bike's oil level would be overflowing once the bike was set up right off the side stand. The previous owner had put too much oil into the bike when doing the last oil change. I have always drilled it into my head to check the oil level of the bikes and make sure that there was always enough oil in the bike, but never did I ever thing to check whether or not the bike had too much oil! So despite the previous owner's oil change mistake, and my ignorance and forgetfulness to check the level, it looks like the bike will be okay. No huge nightmare, no digging further into the engine to replace parts, and no massive amount of money spent to fix the bike. The excess oil was flushed out and cleaned, and oil level dropped down to its proper level and now the bike runs like a dream. Now that is what I call literally burning the midnight motor oil.

Lesson of the day...do not assume everyone can do their own oil change.

Published: Oct 6, 2009

Leave Comments