afsar Posted February 17, 2012 Posted February 17, 2012 Newbie here, recently got XT125R to commute to work. It has Arrow exhaust fitted and sounds really nice but whoever has fitted it its not professionally done. Its pipe has white coloured cracked sealant where exhaust joins the head and looks like not sealed properly. Anyway I have two problems they could be related but not sure. First there is engine oil leak which seems to be everywhere in the engine area. Everything has black moisture and seems to be wet. A few drop will be on the floor if I leave my bike for sometime. Unable to find origin of leak. Can a badly fitted exhaust leak oil, I am not a mechanic, always thought exhaust won't have any form of oil whatsoever, atleast not enough to leak out. 2nd problem I have is cold start, when in morning I can't start without choke and even with choke engine run for 2-3 minutes (reached 3-4k rev) and it will keep running as long as throttle is opened (fully or partially) but if I close the throttle engine will stall. Its idle varies from 900-1100 and can't keep itself up for long. However after a few miles of driving it when engine is hot idle will change to 1600-1800 (today it was in 2k region). Not sure its related but its quite frustrating to restart engine 10 times in the morning just due to bad idle. Not sure resetting idle will help as it seems to change depending upon how hot engine goes. Any help will be highly appreciated.
JoshuaJc Posted February 17, 2012 Posted February 17, 2012 is the bike a 2 stroke or 4 ? that could tell you about the leak, and secondly with the cold start problems you should set up your carburetor properly. The sooner the better seeing as the weather we've been having just lately has been changing so often. Josh.
afsar Posted February 17, 2012 Author Posted February 17, 2012 Its is 4 stroke. how do you setup carb properly? Any DIY, pointer?
afsar Posted February 19, 2012 Author Posted February 19, 2012 Dug deeper and exhaust seems to much more likely to be causing oil leak. I can see very little gap in right hand side of exhaust where it meets the head, today I applied some sealent but not sure if that will really help. Will watch it for few days and then see what can be done further.
afsar Posted February 26, 2012 Author Posted February 26, 2012 Sealant didn't help at all. Doesn't look like its even coming from there. This weekend when weather was a really good I had another look. To my surprise I found that air-filter spung had lot of oil in it? Some oil in the airbox bottom too. I think oil is coming from the the point where carb joins the head. I don't have a case of overfilled oil, so looks like this is a big problem to fix. What exactly this could be, any investigation line to follow?
Moderator Airhead Posted February 26, 2012 Moderator Posted February 26, 2012 sounds like you have several prblems, the engine idling fast and needing choke a lot and the oil coming from carb joint may all be related, you need to carefully investigate this situation, relace any joint gaskets in that connection but before you do just ensure the screws hoding this joint are tight enough you also need to remove the exhaust, replace the joint there and align the thing better so there are no gaps, this may also give to poor running as for oil in the airbox, clean it all out and check there isnt too much oil in the engine, there maybe an inspection window but bike has to be upright not on sidestand
afsar Posted February 26, 2012 Author Posted February 26, 2012 Airhead thanks for your response, I will check this in detail, wish me luck if it is just joint gasket and screws. Gap is exhaust is giving loud pop from deacceleration (not always but most of time) so not a big issue for now. Is it normal to have oil on the airfilter, I read conflicting results on a quick google. Some say that its the oil which filter out the unwanted stuff from airflow and some say its too much oil causing this problem. Not sure which one is my case but for sure there isn't too much oil in this bike as I last checked it (and yes it was after 1 hr of driving, so engine was hot)
afsar Posted April 17, 2012 Author Posted April 17, 2012 I am still using this bike in my daily commute and so far all is good. I keep topping up the oil and engine keeps leaking it :-) To test this further after reading at various forum I thought I will give a go when engine is running to see if pressure pushes out oil when oil top-up cap is opened. Guess what I couldn't open it fully or else all the oil would have jumped out thru the opening... A bit flew off and burnt off as it touched the hot exhaust pipe. This certainly seems like a case of engine blow-by (as I understand it). Not sure despite this heavy blow-by how come I can still run it upto 65 mph happily and there is no problem in driving whatsoever. How hard DIY is this to sort it out. Worth fixing it or should I get another (used) engine? They come cheap. How hard is to exchange the engine. Either way engine has to come off the bike, considering engine will be taken off anyway how hard will it be to mend the broken one?
Moderator Airhead Posted April 17, 2012 Moderator Posted April 17, 2012 maybe a new set of piston rings would be in order?
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