HELP... I have a 78 1/2 Shovel that has over 200,000 k (at least after 8 speedo's, that is as near as I can guess) I have rebuilt it several times and love my sled, so please do not tell me to buy a new Harley I have way too much in after market polished parts including a kawasaki front brake system I built (tubes, legs, calipers and rotors on a dual front end attached to an Accutronix trees with matching forward controlls). Yes alot of folk heads turn when they see it.

After the latest rebuild, I added a new JIMS oil breather valve and now I am blowing oil from my breather tube! I checked the ball and the slide valve on my S&S oil pump and both are clean and seated properly. I have 12 lbs pressure at idle and around 25 to 30 under throttle. After I rode less than a mile I noticed the oil turned around and came back home. Oil was up my ramp into my garage and coming out of the tube. I shut it off, let it cool down and now on startup, there is no oil coming out of the tube - do you think the problem is fixed? If not - what are your suggestions? The S&S oil pump has less than 5,000 miles on it.

Besides that issue it runs like a raped ape and I would hate to ruin my day by having oil coming out of the breather tube and hitting the road right in front of my rear tire, that would cause serious road rash.

Thanks,
ShovelheadGreg

 

Did the Jims breather valve have a timing index mark and did it match with location of original? Is there excessive crankcase / oil tank pressure? I had a S&S valve in my '83 that caused the same problem. It wasn't properly indexed.

 

Yes it has a timing mark and it was aligned rightand now my leak stopped. I pulled the ball and slide valve from the S&S pump, stretched the spring a little, re-seated the ball and the slideand it magically stopped!!!! WooHoo, back on the road and very little chrome is a nice feeling!

 

I'd push an ol' shovelbefore buying a new HD. But that's just me. Nothin' wrong with the Kawi front-end. In the old day, we used to put Ceriani front-ends on Superglides and Sportys 'cause they could reallycarve canyons and do the twisties. They were one of the first upside-down forks around to be adapted for use on HDs. But IMHO,there's nothing thatlookssweeter than a set of wideglides in front of those twin fatboobs!