oil seep

[Anonymous]

I have oil seeping it looks like out from between the cooling fins on the cylinder block of my 80 gs1000g. There is no oil seepage from the headgasket or the bottom gaskets, it looks like its coming right out from the fins. Any ideas? Do I have a cracked block?

TIA
Ben

[lhanscom]

Check your tach cable, and your cam chain tensioner. Oil has a way of sneaking around these engines via the cooling fins, so where you see oil isn't nessisarily where it's actually coming from.

[Anonymous]

Hi Guys.........
I have exactly the same problem on my GS850....weep on the front fins and nowhere near the gaskets..Puzzling at first, but I narrowed it down the a leak at the tensioner at the rear, and somehow making its way to the front of the engine.
Probably the same site of the leak on yours by the sounds of it ...I,d deffinately take a look!

[Anonymous]

Leakage at the cam end-caps will do this. Looks like the oil is coming from nowhere because of the way airflow walks the oil film around.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the replys, I have the bike in at the local shop beacuse of this leak, their initial take was that the bottom gasket was blowing the oil but I don't buy it because it's coming from about 2-3 fins above that point and the bottom gasket is dry all around. I'm crossing my fingers that it's the cam chain tensioner because that will be a lot easier to fix than tearing apart the whole engine to get to the bottom gasket!

[focus frenzy]

leaks at the timing chain tensioner is very common and the oil will show up in the oddest places, mine showed in front dead center.

[Anonymous]

It may be coming from the cyl. head studs with the acorn nuts on top, I think those studs do double duty as oil feed or return passages. You may want to try retorqing them.

[Anonymous]

You folks were dead on with the cam chain tensioner. One of the mounting bolts had snapped off and it was leaking oil of course. The shop quoted me $500 to pull the motor and drill the bolt but I got it out on my own for zero dollars! I'm psyched, I finally get to ride!

THANK YOU ALL!

[Billy Ricks]

The shop quoted me $500 to pull the motor and drill the bolt...

Bastards.