Well, I left work a little early yesterday afternoon and decided to go by Autozone to pick up one of those oil-leak detection kits (UV light, dye, glasses etc.) after several days of finding a few drops of oil under the bike. Went home, changed into some grungy clothes and began searching for the oil leak and the source of the smoke that I was still getting a little of (more than I thought I should at any rate).

Anyway, before pouring in the UV dye, I figured I’d take a quick look with a flashlight around the bike to see if I could figure out where the oil was coming from. Lo and behold, I see a drop… on the bottom of the airbox. Hmm… that’s weird. That is neither low on the bike for oil to wick to, nor is it anywhere near where I would expect to find oil. So, I pull off the seat and the side panel (the other side from the battery), and what do I see? A little moisture around the airbox lid. Hmmmm… odd.

So, whip out the screwdriver and remove the four screws. Little stiff, no problem… put the screws aside and then yank on the lid of the airbox…

What’s funny is you don’t really realize how well sealed the airbox actually is until you find that it’s half full of oil… probably a third of a quart (a twelfth?)

So, out with the rags and shop towels… went through a whole roll of the “hyper absorbent” type towels trying to mop up the pool of oil in the bottom of the airbox, the pool of oil now on the garage floor under the bike and the oil that had run down the side of the bike and onto the exhaust (of course!) when I pulled the lid off. I became extremely thankful that I’d decided to put the bike on the center-stand instead of leaving it on the kickstand or else the oil flowing out of the thing would have been worse.

So after an hour of scrubbing the floor of the garage and cleaning up the oil, I reassembled the bike and started her up. No smoke… not even a wisp. The exhaust is nice and clean.

I guess it’s time to buy a new air filter… but as of last night I checked around the bike… not even a drop of oil on the floor. Lurvely.

I also inadvertently discovered that the bike won’t go into gear with the kickstand down. It’ll stall first… found that out last night and was actually nicely impressed with that one. Pretty cool actually! I put her into gear and gradually released the clutch… almost as a soon as I started to hit the friction point the engine stopped. Took me a second or two to figure out what had happened… restarted the bike, put the kickstand up, into first and out with the clutch. Nice… started rolling nicely. Good to remember for future reference, and a nice feature in a nice bike, I’m impressed.

Now, roll on Monday so I can get her road-legal!