Awesome ride home from work today....I got home and there was oil all over the exhaust, rear wheel and fender, rear shock and everything below it. Luckily nothing on my pants, shoes or bags.

I looked and my oil dipstick was totally unscrewed and just dangling around. The last few times I've turned my bike off I've heard a bit of a hissing from around that area, like when you open a soda bottle and pressure is released.

Has this ever happened to anyone? Could pressure have built up and made the cap pop out or do you think someone simply dicked around with my bike? Seems like kind of a weird thing to do in the office parking lot, so assuming that's not the case, what type of mechanical issue could cause something like that? I did an oil change about 3 weeks ago and added Speed Merchant fork preload adjusters last night, which should have nothing to do with this.

 

Overfilling will cause preassure which can pop the dipstick open....

 

Not when its screwed in I wouldn't think.

 

Yup. What he said.

 

If you put too much oil in three weeks ago the oil would be coming out of the breather tubes so NO the dipstick could not have popped itself. I would think someone loosened it or you checked the oil and somehow forgot to make it tight again.

 

Yeah that was my thought. Levels are fine, but if I overfilled 3 weeks ago, I would have had oil shooting out of the breather tubes. If pressure didn't build up in the 100 degree heat 2 weeks ago, I don't see why it would randomly pop on the way home from work.

Oh well, we'll chalk it up as a freak thing and I'll monitor it. At least now I have a custom swirl effect thunderheader.

 

LOL healthy attitude!

 

Dirty gummy breathers will do this as well. It puts all the crank case pressure in the oil tank.

 

My guess is someone is messing around with your bike. If your office parking lot has surveillance cameras and you could see the recording that would be cool.

 

If the breather in your rocker boxes is restricted it could cause crankcase pressure to build up