R1100RT blowing oil off side stand

[DonSydney]

Have not ridden my 96 R1100RT (115,000km) for about 3 weeks, and its been sitting on the sidestand all that time. On starting it this morning, smoke was coming from the exhaust. After a minute or so it abated, and I havent been able to detect any since. I'm aware that this is (or used to be) common in K series bikes, but not sure about 'R's. Comments ?

 

Cheers

 

Don

[Tony_K]

Sounds like a bit of oil in the combustion chamber via rings.

Center stand solves this at least from the smoke aspect of it.

 

Reconditioning may be in order down the line if you are motivated to do so or just ride and keep a eye on the oil level.

 

Addendum: Check air box for oiling. I guess it's possible to have just enough in there to go down the tube and TB to combustion chamber. Smoke.

It's better that than the rings.

[flars]

Almost all of them will do this. (I almost said TADT, but someone might argue with me.) It is perfectly normal.

[casticus]

+1

 

Mine does this and it doesn't seem to affect oil level enough to notice.

[Jerry Johnston]

If your's turns out to be excessive, which I doubt or you would have noticed it when parked that way on short periods of time, I read where if the split in the rings were all line up the same way it would cause this. The article (it's was in 96 I read it) commented that when assembling the rings breaks needed to be rotated at least 90 degrees from one another. I'm unable to find the article but maybe one of the mechanics on this site can agree or dissagree to that.

[ShovelStrokeEd]

Actually, we set them at 120 degrees apart, and further making sure the split rings in the oil control groove are set towards the top of the piston. If the bores are really round, they don't move much, if at all, from the original positions. 2 stroke engines use pins on their rings (no oil control ring) to keep them from rotating into the ports on the front, rear and sides of the bores as snagging a ring end will quickly destroy both the piston and the bore. Not really needed on a 4 stroke.

 

In terms of ring end gap, once installed in the bore, the gap is pretty small. A rule of thumb for this is 0.004" (0.1 mm) per inch of bore. A little less for tne #2 ring and, depending on who made the rings, a little more for the oil control rings. So, an R1200 motor would have a ring end gap of around 0.016" inch. Damn little oil gonna flow through there. I would look more towards an intake valve stem seal going bad.

[Ken H.]

I would look more toward an intake valve stem seal going bad.

Well... But given the location of the valve stems, fairly high in the head relative to the valve cover, I'm not sure I can envision how oil would pool up against the stem seal such that it could migrate into the cylinder while at rest?

[ShovelStrokeEd]

It doesn't, it gets sucked down the valve guide when the engine comes to a stop with a high vacuum in the cylinder. The odds of this are 40/720 for a single cylinder, which explains why it doesn't happen all the time and happens more often on the 4 cylinder bikes than the twins. A pair of valve springs all coated with oil will happily drip on the stem for quite some time.

[ratfink]

Don't worry, be Happy. Ride more often and don't let any Harley or Ducati guys see this happen or you will never hear the end of it. Oh yeah FJR guys too.

[DonSydney]

Don't worry, be Happy. Ride more often and don't let any Harley or Ducati guys see this happen or you will never hear the end of it. Oh yeah FJR guys too.

 

Hey, when I'm not riding the RT I AM one of those Harley guys !

[Roger D]

Before you do a lot of "fixing" check to make sure that you don't have oil in the air box. There's a plastic "keyed" drain plug on the bottom of the air box that you can reach from the left side of the bike.