My latest faux pas...

[hikermikem]

Nice weather here this weekend in CT, kind of like the calm before the long, big storm called winter .

Decided to get the bike ready for it's annual nap...

Took a ride to warm up the oil, then changed it and the filter, & jumped back on to ride up to the gas station about 5 miles away to top off the tank.

Pulled along side the pump and noticed smoke rising up from the front of the engine. Looked underneath and saw oil covering the entire bottom of the engine and all over my 4-1 header (hence the smoke). Then I noticed the rear tire was completely wet with oil - scary considering I could have dumped the bike in a curve with a tire like that!

Oil was dripping quite freely from the bottom of the oil filter cover so I quickly pushed the bike over to a grassy area so as not to make a huge oily mess at the pumps. Now I'm thinking, I'm screwed, I can't drive it back home to fix it because, (a) I've apparently lost a lot of oil based on the tenacity of the leak, and (b) my rear tire is essentially "bathed" in oil.

Luckily my daughter lives close by so a quick phone call to her with instructions to stop by my tool shed & pick up an assortment of stuff I thought I might need (including some simple green cleaner & lots of jugs of water to clean the rear tire).

So, there I am on the side of the driveway at the local gas station, draining the oil & removing the filter cover, while my daughter scrubs the rear tire clean. The culprit was a cut o-ring in the filter cover - the same o-ring I had just cleaned & greased when I changed the filter about a 1/2 hour previous. Didn't have a new one with me, but another quick trip to the shed & back and presto, no more leak!

What did I do different this time?? I didn’t check for oil leaks when I started the engine after I changed out the oil & filter like I usually do – I simply jumped on the old girl & took off. Completely confident nothing was amiss; after all, I’ve done that task a million times with never a hitch.

Ha, you can bet I won’t do that again! I was fortunate this time I was close to home & someone was around to “rescue” me. Lesson learned.

[JAG]

Rebuilt my front calipers. Something I know well.

Hung them both on one side from the bars on bungies to ease bleeding. System purged of air, good to go. Went to bolt them to the legs and the hoses are to short? Eh?

Yep, had rebuilt them with the carriers upside down.

Complete strip down and rebuild later, finally got them on.

I feel so ashamed

[Sci85]

I got a twofer for ya. After painting my wheels, I installed the rotors (slotted) on the wrong side of the wheel and didn't notice it for a week. Doh! Took the wheel off to swap the rotors to the proper side and the brake pads came out. No worries, I slid them back into place then buttoned everything up and took a nice long ride. However, something was amiss because now I hear a slight scraping coming from the front brakes. Oh well, she's stopping ok so I'll figure it out later...A couple days later I go to take a look and discover I put the brake pad in inside out so the backing is scraping on the rotor. Doh Doh! Yeah, I feel like an idiot alright...

[spyug]

Well I still think last years no oil pressure/light won't go out 550 fiasco tops you all.

For those who hadn't heard of it, I had just picked up an 83 550 and getting it ready I decided to do a full oil and filter change. On completion I start it up to check for leaks, find none but the oil pressure light doesn't go off as the bike warms. Now what I think and the diagnostics begin..........and go on for near on 3 months.

Suffice to say I all but rebuilt the engine, wrote hundreds of pages in a thread, followed all kinds of suggestions and spent countless hours searching the web for a cure. Nothing I did solved the issue.

Then one day I got the bright idea to check the oil filter as an almost last resort and hey presto there's the problem staring me right in the face.....the filter was in backwards and the solid end was blocking off the return port.......doh, drat and double doh.

Talk about feeling like an absolute prat. So I don't think your faux pas was all that bad considering but I'll bet you won't do that again just like I'll never put a filter in backwards either.

[eil]

A week ago, I was just about to take off on the 850 when I happened to notice a small but steady stream of oil coming from the bottom of the engine and pooling on the garage floor. Bugger! Turns out two of the acorn nuts on the filter cover had gone MIA. I shudder to think of what would have happened had I not noticed. No idea how zero oil managed to leak out when I came in from my last ride or while the bike sat for two weeks thereafter. I'm lucky that I had the nuts on-hand already since I was planning to change out the nuts/studs for brand-new at the upcoming oil change. Moral of the story: blue locktite those mofos!