I have removed the forwardclinder head of my 78, sportybecauseI hadoil leakingleakingand thought the gasket was shot. The gasketdoesn't look bad and the head was bolted on tight.I had recently had a problem where the same cylinder wasn't getting spark and the engine ran a short while ononly the rear clynder.

Question: Could running on one cylinderf-up the head and causetheoil leak? If not, whatelse would cause oil to leak from the head gasket?Don't want to reassembleand not fix the problem. Any insight would be greatly appreciated, Jim

 

Check the rocker armshaft bolts. If the o-ring is bad, it will leak and run down the fins. If you ride it while it's doing this, the wind will blow it back and down and make it look like a blown gasket. Something else that will produce this is a bad fork seal, the fork oil will drip back on the casing while you're riding. I've had both happen to me and I'm currently taking care of the rocker arm shaft bolts now.

Rich

 

Thanks for the reply.Will ckeck it out.Jim

 

+1 on that thought Pyro.

 

Here's another one to investigate. This happened to me.

First where is the oil at? Below the head and by the actual cylinder jug? If so it might still be around the gasket. When I rebuilt mine I overlooked some very small amounts of the old head gasket which left enough of a gap for small amounts of oil to leak out. So another thing for you to check is make sure the metal surfaces on both the head and the cylinder jug are completely cleaned off and smooth. Then lay down the gasket and tighten the head bolts down to 60 ft-lbs.

This guy on ebay sells tef-lon coated head gaskets that I bought and used and those things are probably the best things I have used. Check it out.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Tef-l...spagenameZWDVW