Oil filling up the starter pocket?

[Buffalo Bill]

Well, I lean my '810550T onto it's kickstand and oil spills onto the ground. I lift the lid off the starter and I can see the pocket it sits in, is filled to the brim with oil. Must be a gasket, at the base of the cylinders, or the stator cover gasket?
Any of you guys seen this before?

[Billy Ricks]

Could becoming from the cam chain tensioner. There are o-rings on the starter where it goes into the crankcase.

[mike-s]

Could becoming from the cam chain tensioner. There are o-rings on the starter where it goes into the crankcase.

i was thinking o-ring too. i'd put a fiver on it being the root cause.

[Billy Ricks]

i was thinking o-ring too. i'd put a fiver on it being the root cause.

You'd probably win that $5.

[BassCliff]

Hi,

It sounds as if your "mystery hole" is plugged. But I'm not sure why that much oil would collect there in the first place. See this post. Starter nose o-ring? Leaky oil pressure switch?


Thank you for your indulgence,

BassCliff

[focus frenzy]

there should be a drain hole below the starter to keep oil from building up.
most commonly known as the mystery hole.

[KEITH KRAUSE]

Probably a bad o-ring around the starter shaft as someone else said.

[focus frenzy]

there is one other place the oil can come from. oil can get past a bad stator harness gromit and will ooze into the starter cavity.

[Buffalo Bill]

Thanks!

OK, thanks guys, glad to know it's probably not the base gasket.
I took a short test run that included some hard pulls, and oil has appeared in the starter pocket. No evidence of oil on top of the crank case or seepage from the base gasket.
It looks like the starter lid is trapped under the cam chain tensioner and the carbs, so all that's got to come out to remove the starter: is that the way it is?

[SqDancerLynn1]

You got it, have to remove the carbs esp on the 550

[Buffalo Bill]

Update: Mystery hole solved by genius!

there should be a drain hole below the starter to keep oil from building up.
most commonly known as the mystery hole.

I looked for the drain hole, (known as the Mystery Hole) and found it had been plugged with epoxy putty, no doubt by a frustrated genius.
After scraping the putty off, water and oil poured out. I'll take stupidity for granted, after this previous owner.

[bwringer]

I looked for the drain hole, (known as the Mystery Hole) and found it had been plugged with epoxy putty, no doubt by a frustrated genius.
After scraping the putty off, water and oil poured out. I'll take stupidity for granted, after this previous owner.

Crikey, that's funny. Someone actually plugged the Mystery Hole.


The Mystery Hole got its name after I noticed that we had a rash of posts from panicked GS newbies.

Eventually, almost every GS owner spots the round hole under the engine and wonders what it's for. Most don't worry about it, but some are convinced that aliens have been drilling holes in their engine, and become obsessed with plugging it.

Some, not stopping to think, felt a powerful urge to plug the hole, and we barely stopped them in time.

Looks like we missed one...


For the record: if oil is coming from the Mystery Hole, it's almost always the o-ring around the nose of the starter. This is very cheap and easy to fix and is no cause for undue alarm.

The Mystery Hole is needed to allow rain water to drain out of the cavity containing the starter. If you plug your Mystery Hole, your starter will drown. PLEASE DON'T PLUG YOUR MYSTERY HOLE!


Some Mystery Hole photos -- these are from a GS850 carcass, but all GS models have the same type of Mystery Hole. The blue tubing is just there to show they're connected:

From underneath:


From inside the starter cavity: