THis will be a long post so i apologize in advance. Im working on a evo motor, it a "homebuilt" bike...im refraining from using the work custom since i am not a bike builder. :-) I rebuilt the motor over the winter and got it running a few weeks ago. Got two issues that are baffling me. First issue is I have is white smoke coming off the front cylinder area. It seem to be mainly coming from the left side area on the front jug area. At first i thought it was burnoff from machine work done to the jugs and having oily hands while handling the jugs etc...I have started and let the bike run numerous times and it not clearing up so i no longer think it burnoff. I dont have smoke coming out of the tailpipe for that cylinder....so i dont think i have a leaking valve seal. Wondering if maybe having the bike ovefilled with oil might be causing my issue? I was told somewhere along the line it takes 4 qts of oil to fill it up... the oil level in my oil tank is pretty much right up at the top of my fill cap. although weirdly enough the oil level has not drop at all. I dont see any signs of oil leaking anywhere at all to lead me to beleive that oil seeping out somewhere onto the jug. Thinking about pulling the sparkplugs after posting this to see if the plug oily but more and less doing that to make me feel better about asking for help lol. For what it worth this is what i did to the motor....replaced both jugs, pistons, rings, head gaskets and rocker box gaskets. I DID NOT do any head work, DID NOT split the case. Could it still be an issue where the rings on the piston havent fully seated yet? As you can tell im just at a lost as to where to go from here. Second issue I have which i think is pretty simple and not related to the smoke is I can only get the bike to idle for about 5-10 mintues and it will die. Doesnt seem to be missing out or running rough or anything, the bike just dies. Now I do have a completely dead battery. Im using a heavy duty charger with a jump setting on it to start the bike. I usually charge the battery about five mintues and then fire it up and shut down the charger. Kinda thinking that the reason the bike dying is cause I dont have a properly charge battery. I havent really wanted to leave the charger running while the bike running...wasnt sure if all that juice would start frying all my new wires i ran on the bike :-) so basically just wanted to make sure i was on the right track with it and that I just need a new battery and that i dont have some weirdo electrical problem or a problem with the stator/generator? not exactly sure what it called. sorry. any info or advice would be greatly appreciated. im so close to being able to take my project on a test ride and im really starting to itch. :-) thanks in advance

 

First guess, you've got a bad head gasket. Fix that first and consider the idling issue later.

 

I recently had work done to my motor similar to yours, except I did have some head porting done with new valve springs, seals, and guides installed. I have the same issue as you, a puff from the front cylinder during starting and a puff of white smoke out of the end of the pipe. I have true duals so it's limited to just the front cylinder. I pulled both plugs and they look good. Neither is wet, no splattering/speckling marks on the porcelain. I tightened up the front cylinder header pipe to crush in on that exhaust gasket some and voila, no more white smoke on startup.

I'm not saying this is your root cause, but it's worth a minute with a 3/8" drive ratchet with a 1/2" socket on the end.

 

Why did you put in 4 qts of oil , I thought max was just 3.