Too much oil

[jayklink]

This question is not about my XS11- but will apply to all bikes. I just recently bought a FZR600. I noticed that the previous owner had overfilled her with oil. How or what harm will this do to my new toy?

[sixtysix]

Too much oil will cause oil to be pushed out of the breather and into the air box. Also I had a car that had too much oil in it and it actually caused the engine to knock, dealer figured it was bad con rods and found out it was just that they put too much oil in it. Once the extra 2qts of oil was removed the engine sounded and ran fine.

Make sure it is actually oil! If fuel leaks by the carbs it is going to get in your oil! This is why you don't fill to top of site glass so you can tell if level goes up. If you run it with gas in the oil all kinds of bad things happen.

[mn2346]

Slight overfill doesn't harm the engine. It takes atleast quart to make some damage, the real problems start when there is enough oil to reach the crankshaft. This type of failure would be easy to detect since there would be metallic parts flying around (maybe not because it would be hard to start...).

But you have a new bike, why not change the oil and get rid of the problem? There's no way of knowing when it was maintained so just start from zero. Reset the maintenance history and be safe.

-Marko