Damage from fuel in crankcase?

[glib]

A GS1100ED I sold a while back is up for sale and it may have been run with fuel in the crankcase from a bad petcock. If so, what would need to be replaced?

[tkent02]

Probably nothing but the oil. Unless they did it a long time.

[glib]

Probably nothing but the oil. Unless they did it a long time.

No idea on time. It changed hands after I told the kid I sold it to to be sure to change the oil and petcock (and why) when I saw that the oil level in the glass looked high. It needed a couple other items as well. I let it go before I was finished. Pretty sure he ignored me.

[Steve]

I think the first thing that would fail would be the camshaft bearings, followed rather soon by the transmission gears.

The oil pressure is rather low on these engines, so thinning out the oil with gas is not a good thing at all. The crank and rods are all roller bearings, which don't care much about what flows through them, as long as there is plenty of it. The camshafts are relatively hard steel running directly in a machined aluminum surface on the head, so there is no replaceable bearing material. Again, thinner oil isn't going to help anything, but it will be better than nothing.

The transmission is also lubed by engine oil. The gears that mesh into each other under load will squeeze the oil between the teeth. Here, you will need all the protection you can get, so that might actually be your problem area.

Fix the reason the gas gets into the oil, then change the oil and filter.

.

[gsrick]

I doubt there is any problem, like Steve said, drain it out and install a new filter. If you have any old oil that's not too bad, you can run it for a couple of minutes in it before you change the filter to adsorb any fuel still in the block in the trans area and up in the head. I do that at work. I save a gallon jug of used, but still clear oil for times like this or to flush out an atv engine that got water in it.

[bwringer]

Yep, the first thing to go would be the camshaft journals.

Might be fine if it wasn't run too terribly long. But it wouldn't be too hard to pull the valve cover and look.

Evil noises might be the reason it's up for sale, though...

[red1100]

Although this was a car still kind of funny. My buddy at work(82 1100E) was working on a friends 71 Charger 383 trying to get it to run.He called me over to see what was wrong.They had been cranking this thing for a week and no fire. So I take a look,it’s a standard 383 Magnum with an avs carb. I find they had hooked up the rubber fuel line to the baseplate of the carb which was the vacuum port for the power brakes. Yep all that gas was going right past the rings and into the crankcase. I connected the fuel line to the carb inlet and told them to drain the oil and refill plus new filter. I wasn’t going to be there when they attempted to restart. Found out later they drained 5 GALLONS out of the motor,mostly gasoline! It had to be clear up above camshaft level. They refilled it with oil after letting it sit and dry for a couple days and it fired right up. Little lifter clatter went away and that was all. Disaster averted. My buddy said it has never run so smooth. I was still running fine years later.