hey I was wondering if any one ever had their primary fillup with engine oil I took the primary cover off to polish it and when I put it back together the oil tank just drains into the primary cover whether the engine is running or not when I put the cover back on I used a new primary gasket and foot peg stud gasket this is on a 90 xl 1200 4 speed could the crankshaft seal have gone bad from sitting for 6 months

I'm not sure what you're saying.

Is your engine oil going into the primary? That's not normal, they are isolated systems.

Or are you just asking if you can use engine oil in the primary? In that case yes you can. I used to use mobil redcap syn 20w50(?? been a long time) in both. Now that that's not available and I end up going to the bike shop to get oil I'm back to using gear oil in the primary and 20w50 in the engine.

Gazza

the problem is the engine oil is leaking into the primary

Yep that's a problem.
I don't know, but I'll make this dumb post so this thread get's bumped up to the top again ;)

Gazza

Usually that means the crank seal is leaking, and there can be a lot of reasons for the leak. A common one is a restricted breathing system.

It's a problem ONLY IF this happens when it's running. Did you have the motor sprocket off when you had the primary off? If so, the crank seal would have nothing to seal against, and the motor oil that normally drains into the bottom end (sumping they call it) would all end up in the primary. Also, if you filled your oil tank after seeing it was empty after sitting, you would have way too much oil in there (couple quarts in the bottom end, 3 more in the tank, that's too much oil.)

The typical way for the oil to go from the engine to the primary is through the crank seal. There can be other problems (porosity for example) but the fact that yours was apart for so long makes me thing something else is going on (like bad crank seal, or there was no motor sprocket for a while.)

Did you have the motor sprocket off?

--Chris

hey Chris I never removed the motor sprocket but the engine was removed from the stock frame and put in a differnt frame at that time I drained the oil from the oil tank but I don't know how much oil was still in the engine

You need to run the engine to get the oil out of the bottom end so you can drain it all. Hopefully you've done that.

If you can, the safest thing to do is drain the oil from the primary and engine (oil tank) then replace the crankshaft seal to make sure it's good. Then refill the primary normally, and add just one quart to the oil tank if you've not run the engine to get the oil out of the bottom end. If the motor has been run recently, then most of the oil will be out of the bottom end, and then you can add two quarts. And one quart of oil to the tank, then start the engine and watch the level in the tank. It might come up as the oil gets pumped out of the bottom end. After running for a couple minutes, top off the engine oil to the correct level.

If the oil level appears to be dropping in the oil tank, it might be time to look in the primary again and check the level there.

--Chris

what do you mean by a restricted breathing system?

If the breather is blocked off it will not allow the engine to vent pressure. The next place that pressure would go is past either the right or left side case main seals.

ok I checked all the vents oil tank was clear the cam cover on my motor has a vent on top by the oil filter housing it's clear but the little 90 at the back of the cam cover was blocked could this have caused enough pressure to blow the crank seal?

Maybe, but not likely. That vent at the back of the cam cover equalizes the pressure between the oil tank and the motor. The one you don't want restricted if the one up front on the outside of the cam cover, near the oil filter as you described.

Can you share the whole story of this bike and the motor swap? Maybe there's more details that will help point to the problem.

Thanks,
Chris

the bike was running fine last fall when I removed the engine since then I've put in a set of n4 cams bought a differnt cam cover that was cut down installed a hi4 ignition and removed the primary cover to polish it and put back together with new gaskets on the covers and new push rod seals I also put chrome rocker boxes on other than that nothing else was touched when I reinstalled the engine I filled the oil tank with 3 quarts of oil started it up let it run for a couple of minutes and noticed the primary was full of engine oil

I'm confused. Why did you remove the engine if it was running fine? Did you swap engines in two different bikes or something? Or did you remove the engine so you could install the cams, primary and rocker boxes?

Still confused...

---Chris

I put the engine in a differnt frame

OK- the engine was fine. You removed it to put into a different frame. In there somewhere it sat for six months. Also in there it got cams, rocker boxes and the primary was removed to polish it. Is that all correct?

Based on all that, I think I would go back to this post. (http://www.xlforum.net/vbportal/forums/showpost.php?p=415226&postcount=7)

Bottom line: the seal is cheap, so change it. Even if you put the wrong rocker boxes on a '90, that wouldn't affect the breathing. The plugged cam cover vent line would not do this. Can't see how just removing the outer primary cover could cause anything. It's possible from sitting for 6 months something happened. If something sits around here for 6 months, you never know what the kids will do to it!

--Chris

How did you know the primary was full of oil? What tipped you off to that?

--Chris

the clutch was hard to pull in and was draging

That would be a good clue :)

I just thought of something else. Is it possible you hooked up the transmission/primary vent line to the oil tank or engine somehow, or that you hooked up the oil lines incorrectly in some other way? The transmission is supposed to vent to atmosphere, so the fitting on top of the trans should have a hose on it that just vents to atmosphere under the seat somewhere. If that hose is hooked up to something, it shouldn't be :)

After 6 months it's hard to remember where all the hoses go. Maybe something is hooked up incorrectly? If the primary fills with engine oil whether the engine is running or not, there's something major going on. How quickly does that happen? It takes time for the oil tank to drain into the engine (wet sump) like months in most cases, unless there is something else seriously wrong. So, how long does it take, with the engine not running, to fill the primary? Even if the seal were bad, the oil would still have to drain from the oil tank into the engine before it could get into the primary past the seal.

--Chris

I drained the oil again and put a new crank seal in double checked all vent and oil lines all lines were hooked up right started the engine with 1 quart of oil in the oil tank ran it for a few min. the level never came up so I added 1 more quart of oil and ran it seems to be mataining a constant level in the tank I checked the primary and it to seems ok I guess I'll add 1 more quart of oil and see what happens the seal must have gone bad it did have 30.000 miles on it thanks for your help I wish I could pinpoint what happend oh well it's fixed for now

If the oil lines are hooked up properly, and you have a new seal, it would have to be something really odd to happen again.

Good luck.

--Chris