990 Refresh, Oil Leaks Part 1

Sometimes I think I should just stay in bed. I'll get up and almost immediately know it was a bad idea. I never listen to the little voice that tells me to go back to bed, although I probably should. Yesterday was like that. I hurt my back on my last MTB ride with a buddy three days earlier and had taken a few days off to let it ease up. Then the night before, while playing with one of my dogs, I had broken one of my toes. That's pretty normal for me, but it still hurts. When I woke up, my back still hurt, my toe hurt and I was still tired as hell. I almost went back to bed, but decided to give life a go...big mistake. My morning bike ride was ok, my foot hurt like hell, but I still had fun and felt good otherwise. After working around the house for awhile, I decided it was time to fix those oil leaks on the 990. If I fixed them, I could put my oil back in the bike and get it fired up again. I was pretty anxious to make some effort towards that, so off to the garage I went. The first job was supposed to be the hardest, but in retrospect hasn't that bad. I was pretty worried that not only would I have to drop the oil, but also the coolant, which would mean re-burping the system. It isn't hard, but it is time consuming and I wanted to avoid that if I could.

I had spent the previous day removing most of the body work as well as draining the oil to prep for things. The oil tank and exhaust system were also removed and I figured I had enough room to do the job easily enough. The first step today was propping the engine up with a scissor jack since I was removing one of the engine mounts. I borrowed that from my wife's Suburu and put that in place. The mount is held on with 5 bolts. The two top bolts are attached to the frame, the moddle bolt goes through the engine to support it and the two lower bolts help hold on the battery box. It was straight forward to remove. This silver part is the mount I removed

The oil hose is behind all this clutter, thankfully it is all easy to push aside.

The clamp that holds it in place was the toughest thing to get to, but after some work with a 90 degree awl and a small flathead screwdriver, I got it to this point where I could easily grab it with needlenose pliers to remove.

Then, after prying on the bottom of the hose with a larger screwdriver and pulling on it from above, the old hose popped right off. I spent some time cleaning up the area around the hose and then after spraying a bit of WD40 on the outside of the hose to help it slip by the engine, slid the new kevlar hose in place.

Once in place, I used contact cleaner to remove the WD40 from the hose and engine. Then I slid on the new 18.5mm clamp and pinched it tight.

After double checking to make sure it was installed proplerly, I went over the electrical connections in front of it that were now super easy to clean and hit with some Corrosion X. Then I re-installed the engine mount and made sure to anti seize those bolts in case I have to remove them sometime in the future.

After that, I put the oil tank back on and reattached the front header.

I put some new nuts on the header that finally showed up.

That wasn't so bad. So next up was the oil filter cover. I needed to find out if it was pinched or dry. Pulling it off was simple, but not remembering to put the oil pan under it was the universe warning me to take a break...I didn't listen. I found that the gasket was twisted, easy enough to fix, since they are cheap, I replaced it wit a new one and made sure it was well lubed before installing it.

After cleaning my oil mess up, I went after the shifter seal. They are hard to get to on most bikes, and this one is no exception. First up I removed the shifter and kickstand sensor...

Then I pulled out the tools neccessary and proceeded to screw up a simple job. You need to make a small hole in the old seal (that bronze colored ring around the shift shaft). To do this, you normally use a drill, especially for these metal seals. The big problem came when the drill bit I was using walked into the shift shaft. I knew it had to be scored, and that's bad juju. The shfter wont seal if it is scratched. I cussed up a storm before calming down. I eventually just poked a hole in the seal with an awl and plastic mallet. Crud, if I had done that in the first place, all my problems would be small. I got a wood screw into the seal and using a set of linesman pliers, yanked it out to inspect the damage.

There were two furrows in my brand new shift shaft. They are deep enough that the shaft is basically useless now. Sure, I could run it as is, but it will spit oil all over that side of the engine.

I had to remind myself that these things happen, especially when you are low on brain power like me. I decided to stop there and try to figure out a good solution to fix the problem. Anyhow, that was kind of disappointing, but I'll figure it out somehow. Onwards