Mystery Oil leak

[scappod]

Okay My fellow xsives:
I have a brand new (rebuilt/reman) XS. I did most of the work myself and if you want to gander her She can be seen under PITA in the search engine. Anyway when we went on our first road trip I found oil had saturated my left leg right about ankle level and had soaked my transmission and starter area. I thought it was the crank case breather and an overfill issue. I checked oil on the center stand and the levels were fine and even re routed the breather. Thinking that I had fixed the problem I went on another ride and still had oil on my left leg after that one and it was not comming from the breather. Are there any suggestions that anyone has as to where the leak may be comming from??? I thought the cam chain tensioner because there is oil gathering on the front portion of the left side of the motor on the engine fins it then trails back to the area on the left of the motor. Could it be the oil pressure switch?? Can anyone help???

[Snow]

Just a couple ideas I'm throwing out:

Cam oil tube loose (runs along the backside of the cylinders)
Oil filter casing o-ring improperly fitted
Left oil galley seal (under pickupcoil cover)
Cam cover needs re-torquing

It's quite possible the cam-chain tensioner plug is no longer any good - mine got replaced with RTV when I first started work on my bike.

[xschop]

for snow

your box is full, sent buttons priority...BTW, I have them same problem with the cam tensioner. will be doing thr RTV fix this weekend....

[Snow]

Whoops! I've got my pm box cleared out now, sorry about that! It has been awhile, but I do remember some caveat about getting the tensioner reaaaally clean before applying RTV and then letting it cure for a couple days... I think my brother and I ended up doing the procedure a couple times on my bike because we didn't let it cure long enough.

[79XS11F]

If this oil is up on your leg as compared to down on your boots then I would check the 1/2 moon seals at the cam ends, the valve cover seal and cam chain adjuster seal but the adjuster seal would normally send oil down the front of the engine and not so much off to the side unless it's leaking a lot.
Rob

[trbig]

I had a mystery oil leak for a while that sounds like that. My valve cover gasket was leaking on the inner part where the #2 spark plug is. While idling, it would leak down the front and on to the cooling fins there.. then around back while riding. Also.. when riding, it would push the oil back through the air passage, down the #2 carb holder boot and get oil in the area you describe. I would re-torque your valve cover first... Hope this helps.


Tod

[skids]

One of my xs11E's had a leak where the right/rear head bolt passes through the lower engine case, between the head and the cans. It was tough to track down.