Overheating, oil leak when hot, GS1100G 83

[Guest]

Hi,

I've got an issue with my 83 GS1100G, yesterday I picked her up and was stuck in traffic (really slow speeds <20km/h) for a while and she got really hot.
Suzi was leaking oil onto the exhaust causing it to burn and I was basically riding in a cloud of smoke.

I've localized the leak coming from close to the gearbox, there seems to be a hole where the oil leaks, probably hard to tell where it's coming from without opening the gearbox up, but I wanted to check with you in case there's some common pitfalls / issues / defects here...

Also what happened today for the first time was that the engine stalled while put in first gear with the clutch pulled. It felt like when switching into neutral the engine ran with higher RPMs but with clutch engaged in first it felt like the clutch wasn't fully disengaged thus making the engine stall. This only happened after riding for about 1.5h in low traffic. I finally parked the bike and let it cool down a bit until I continued the ride.


IMG_6612.jpg

The yellow arrow points to where the oil leaks, the stuff inside the red circle is a close-up of the area.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[bwringer]

Wow, a Mystery Hole question!

The Mystery Hole is a drain hole for the cavity in the casings that houses the starter. This drain is needed so that the starter cavity doesn't fill with water in the rain. Don't plug your Mystery Hole!

The most common cause of oil coming from the Mystery Hole is that the o-ring on the nose of the starter is leaking. This is pretty easy to replace -- you can actually remove the starter without removing the carbs or cam chain tensioner. This o-ring is #13 on this diagram (your 1983 is a model "D"):

http://www.onlinecycleparts.com/oemparts/a/suz/50d40452f8700230d8b4ed3e/starting-motor

Another possible cause is a leaking cam chain tensioner. Here are instructions for dealing with that: http://bwringer.com/gs/camchaintens.html

There's also the oil pressure switch and a few other bits in the area that could be leaking. Get in there with a strong light and see what's up.

Here are a few views of the Mystery Hole on a GS engine on a bench with the starter removed. The blue tubing is only there to illustrate that the Mystery Hole is connected to the drain hole:





As far as the overheating, it shouldn't do that. My first thought is idle mixture too lean.

[kida]

Awesome! Thx that'll be a good help already. I'll get it sorted out, cheers!