Dre-XT-Stueck - there's always room for a few more mishaps

 ... you didn't really think this was it, did you?

So let's start with the most simple fault, even though it mandated a partial disassembly of the cylinderhead. 

THIS is not what you want to see, when you park your bike somewhere. (The oil-stains on the ground weren't there before.)

Now the story behind it: my later version 1VJ-cylinder head didn't have a provision for the little rubber hose shown below, which is the oil-tank's breather. If you route it into the airbox, well you get the scenario as shown above.

The quick and dirty solution was to tap the valve and use a broken grease nipple to route the breather back into the cylinder head.

With this issue resolved and the bike still not making any funny noises, after at this point having clocked up around 100km or so, I didn't think too much of it, when the odometer jumped to 57666km right before I headed home... oh ye of little faith.

Well the next day I limped back to the workshop with the old girl hardly accepting more than one eighth of throttle. (Still managing 70-80kph on level ground.) And this was a first.

Turned out, the needle-clip broke and thus the needle of the secondary carb got stuck in the slide.

While I was there fixing this, I quickly had to take care of "the pretty one" my dad's XT500 4-valve as it suffered from some rather noisy exhaust valves. 

Actually you can get to them without removing the fuel tank - only the wings have to be taken off.

... and replaced a mangled bolt thatwith a decent stainless one on the tach-drive.

As I already had entered full vanity mode, it was time to tackle the left rear sidepanel and remove some of the stickers and paint the the recessed bit black to match the other side. 

So after one or two days of happy riding I realised that I am not quite satisfied with this solution especially as the breather hose wouldn't sit very well on the nipple. In other words, remove the engine mounts and exhaust, lower the engine take out all the bolts and don't forget about the one hidden behind the valve cover and the other one hidden inside the mount on the head. 

Luckily the head-casting still had the recess for the breather cast in so it was really just a matter of drilling the hole and making a totally over-engineered breather tube on the lathe, because I had run out of 8mm stainless tubing.

Press-fit, no glue.

And then finally with this bit being sorted, I still had to tackle two oil-leaks right below the sprocket cover. One of which was the neutral-switch where the plastic had become brittle and it leaked out between plastic and body and the other one being the copper washer behind the philipps bolt, which holds in the clutch lever. 

I was about to say that with all these issues tackled, the bike is running like a charm, but... well now the speed died after making some terrible sounds yesterday on the way home. I mean, the needle still bounces up and down, but the speed it reports is slightly more arbitrary than usual.