I need to replace the pushrod seal in one of the tubes on a 2000 X1. I just got the bike so I don't yet have a service manual. But, I can't ride the bike until I do this.

Is it pretty easy to get to the rocker boxes? Is it best to wait for the manual. Are the digital manuals worth it? I assume they are just scans of the orginal.

Not a Buell owner, but I just did my 2000 XLH.

I recommend you take the opportunity to put in collapsible tubes and adjustable pushrods. Makes everything easily to fix later on. You can also collapse the pushrods and replace the top seal from within the rocker box without touching the rockers. Ie cut off old seal and slide new one between rocker and pushrod, then push down through head.

Get the manual. You need torque values as a minimum anyway. Also I have bought the electronic copies and they were scans of the manual etc.

Buy a real manual. The digital ones are all illegally supplied copies, either digital copies stolen from a dealer or technical school, or scanned copies of a manual, which is pretty clearly copyright infringement. Find a discounter that offers 20% off the Factory manual. You won't be sorry.

The tubes and seals are easy to remove after removing the rocker boxes, and the rocker boxes come out fairly easily too. Replace the whole lower aluminum piece which has the seal already installed rather than replacing just the rubber seal inside the aluminum piece. A lot of times the aluminum gets warped and will never seal. The other problem you have sometimes is the rubber squishes out when you try to install it in the old aluminum piece, so it doesn't seal that way either.

Unless you're talking about the upper o-ring leaking. That would be far less common, but since you're going to disturb the whole pushrod tube to replace the upper, I would replace the lower as described above as well.

--Chris

I hear you on the copyright. I own nothing but real ones for the sportster. I was hoping to get at something quickly.

Didn't matter though. It was nothing tearing it down. Which was a good thing as I found a ton of crap wrong with it. Oh well, I wanted a project bike and I got one :)

I am going to replace with NRHS billet blocks and replace the tube that leaks just for good measure.

From what I can tell I will have to unbolt the heads to get the pushrod tube out. Supposedly these heads have updated gaskets. Not sure if they are aftermarket like James or HD. If they are metal I should be able to reuse, right?

No, you don't need to remove the heads to remove the pushrod tubes, just the rocker arms. If you want to remove the heads to see what's going on, feel free. You might find more project material in there. I always get new gaskets but others like to reuse the sandwiched metal head gaskets. YMMV.

If you remove the heads, the torque sequence is the same as an XL from the same year (if you have an XL manual).

--Chris

Thanks Chris. Your posts are most valuable.

Don't really want to remove the heads right now. Want to just fix the tubes. Get it cleaned up and get this out there and ride.

Thanks Chris. Your posts are most valuable.

Don't really want to remove the heads right now. Want to just fix the tubes. Get it cleaned up and get this out there and ride.

I think you can do what you want without pulling the heads. I'm not familiar with the details of the X1, but if you tear down the top end to where you can pull the push rods out you can then cut the push rod tubes with something like a cable cutter. Don't saw them, you don't want to create a bunch of filings that will fall into your motor. You can then replace them with the collapsible tubes. Hopefully someone can verify that I'm correct on all of this.

On that generation of motor, the tubes pull right out without pulling the heads. No need to cut anything.

To remove the tubes though, you need to remove the rockers to get the pushrods out first, correct? Once the pushrods are out, you can slip the tubes out without removing the heads. How would you ever be able to cut the pushrods anyway without removing the tubes first?

Be careful to not scratch the aluminum case when you slide the pushrod tube back in on installation. With stock tubes anyway. If you're using the billet blocks, this won't matter. Just putting this here for other people who might be facing the same problem.

--Chris

Chris is 100% right.