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I have a problem with my air filter leaking red/ reddish oil from my big twin 88 softail deuce. I've noticed that when I come in from a ride and put her up for the night, I come out to the garage and there is this red fluid all over my cam chest and air filter is like soaked in the ****. ( I'm sending pics) I'm running royal purple in tranny 75/140, 20/50 in crankcase and primary, just to give you a idea whats up. I can't figure why this is happening unless I'm missing something. So anybody got any answers or clues would be greatly appreciated thanks in advance. I'm sure this has been an upgrade. I just bought it a couple of months ago. I know enough that I know it's not stock
Are you using Redline 20w50 oil? If you are, you have too much oil in the oil tank. She will push the excess oil out of the breather bolts to let you know.
You don't mention your knowledge or experience, so forgive me if this is all stuff you may know, and I'm just seeing the pics wrong...
Looks like you have an external breather bypass on your air cleaner, correct...??
If so, could the external breather connections/lines be leaking on your cam chest??
Your air filter looks like a properly oiled S&S gauze air filter...unless the oil was puddled in the bottom of the filter.
Could be my old eyes, but the air filter backing plate doesn't look to have had oil collecting in the bottom half, and the butterfly looks clean for an engine ingesting enough oil to drip out of the air cleaner...
If you do have an external breather bypass, unless the backing plate was not properly blocked from the breather bolts, there would be no way for the oil to get from the engine into the air cleaner..
Again, maybe it's just my old eyes, but it looks to me like you may have an external breather bypass, that has a connection/hose that is leaking, and you have a properly oiled S&S air filter with a clean air filter housing.. But I have been wrong before..
Are you using Redline 20w50 oil? If you are, you have too much oil in the oil tank. She will push the excess oil out of the breather bolts to let you know.
No, not using redline, but I think I've figured out maybe?? , But thanks for the info.
You don't mention your knowledge or experience, so forgive me if this is all stuff you may know, and I'm just seeing the pics wrong...
Looks like you have an external breather bypass on your air cleaner, correct...??
If so, could the external breather connections/lines be leaking on your cam chest??
Your air filter looks like a properly oiled S&S gauze air filter...unless the oil was puddled in the bottom of the filter.
Could be my old eyes, but the air filter backing plate doesn't look to have had oil collecting in the bottom half, and the butterfly looks clean for an engine ingesting enough oil to drip out of the air cleaner...
If you do have an external breather bypass, unless the backing plate was not properly blocked from the breather bolts, there would be no way for the oil to get from the engine into the air cleaner..
Again, maybe it's just my old eyes, but it looks to me like you may have an external breather bypass, that has a connection/hose that is leaking, and you have a properly oiled S&S air filter with a clean air filter housing.. But I have been wrong before..
Good luck with the diagnosis...
No it's not an external bypass, I don't think, because the breather hose is running back down to the backing plate and attached to it. There is another thing that a guy who replied that made me think about something else that it could be and that's that I may have loaded the filter up too much with k&N oil. It's like you said it's puddling up at the bottom of the filter, hence, the leaking down the cam chest. I hope that's it anyway. Thanks a lot for helping, some advice always helps me. I'm 62 and have some experience with bikes,( back in the day ) but I'm getting back into it after a 20 year hiatus so we'll see
My bet would be too much oil in the filter...K&N filter oil is red.
You know I think you might have hit the nail on the head! Didn't think about that, so maybe eventually it'll dry up and stop. thanks so much for that bro that's going to take a little off the shoulders.
No it's not an external bypass, I don't think, because the breather hose is running back down to the backing plate and attached to it. There is another thing that a guy who replied that made me think about something else that it could be and that's that I may have loaded the filter up too much with k&N oil. It's like you said it's puddling up at the bottom of the filter, hence, the leaking down the cam chest. I hope that's it anyway. Thanks a lot for helping, some advice always helps me. I'm 62 and have some experience with bikes,( back in the day ) but I'm getting back into it after a 20 year hiatus so we'll see
That is a very common occurrence.... Many people over oil those filters from a little bit, to way too much... it's easy to do...
If you had mentioned that you added a K&N air filter, that would have been my first guess..... Problems that pop up can often be traced back to the last thing you worked on... But when you said, "air filter is like soaked in the ****.", I assumed you didn't know you had an oiled air filter.
I over oiled a K&N filter on a car years ago, when I first used a K&N filter... it gummed up the MAF, intake, etc... took me awhile to clean everything up... but I learned my lesson..
Last edited by hattitude; Jun 21, 2021 at 12:16 PM.
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Air filter leak
