Minor oil leak

[dart]

Hey guys another question, I have an oil leak that seems to have reared its head after a longer ride. I have a feeling its been there for a while as there was black oil sludge on the engine in that spot when I got the bike. Its very very slow like a few drops after 200k's.

It seems to be coming out of where the head gasket would be *gs400* only out of the left side though. Now I have noticed a bit of valve noise from this side when its cold. Could this be from the lower pressure caused by the oil leak? If I leave this until winter and just let the engine warm up to make sure the noise goes away before riding do I risk wrecking anything.

I know I have to keep the oil off the engine or it will start smoking/could possibly leak onto my tires if It gets worse.

One other thing I need to do a valve clearence adjustment. I dunno if its ever been done on this engine, will I end up replacing this gasket when I do that? No point in replacing it just to replace it again.

Sorry for all the Q's. I can't do much work on this bike because of me living in an apartment so I gotta get my ducks in a row before I take it over to my dads or GF's dads house to do the work lol.

[BassCliff]

Hi,

To adjust the valve clearances you need only replace the valve cover gasket, not the head gasket. Is it leaking from the valve cover gasket or the head gasket? Here's how your engine stacks up:

Valve cover
Valve cover gasket
Head
Head gasket
Cylinders
Base gasket
Crankcase

Yes, when performing a valve adjustment you should replace the valve cover gasket and possibly the end caps (half moons) if necessary. But I don't know if your bike uses half moons.

A lot of us tend to run the valve clearances on the loose end of the spec range. This leads to a slightly noisier engine but nothing to worry about. You must determine if your noise is normal or not. If I remember correctly, the GS400 is a 4 valve per cylinder engine. You may have locknuts and other things that can loosen up and rattle around. If any of your oil passages were blocked, part of your top end may not be getting its fair share of oil. Let's hope not. Those are a couple of the worst case scenarios. I'd check out the valve clearances as soon as I could.

If you'd really like to know where it's leaking, clean the engine really well and spray with some kind of powder, like foot powder. Run it, then check for the wet spot.


Thank you for your indulgence,

BassCliff