Oil in coolant

[conybeare]

Hi All,

I've got oil in my coolant and was about to rebuild the water/oil pump... but after finding the weep hole, it does not appear to be leaking! The hole is clear and there didn't seem to be any oil or coolant. (If you're thinking it's just clogged: I could stick a paper clip quite a ways up the hole. And the bike usually wears a belly faring.)

So, I'm wondering if this means that the oil is getting into the coolant from somewhere else? Are there other common trouble spots for this? If this info helps, the bike has about 70k, and the rings also seem to be wearing - the plugs have been getting a little oil fouled lately... So maybe gaskets here and there are going... Oy.

I'm also assuming this means I should NOT rebuild the pump, given that it's not actually the problem... Any thoughts?

-CB

[Inge K.]

The only other possibility is the headgasket, and it`s rather seldom that is a problem on a brick.
A leak on the combined pump is rather common, I`ll guess the weep hole is blocked further up.

Inge K.

[Rick G]

The drain hole does a kink near the top so it may be clogged still.
I would suspect the oil/water pump and check it out as the head gasget, as Inge says, doesn't often give trouble.

[conybeare]

OK, thanks for the input, guys. Sounds like I'll be rebuilding the water pump this weekend...

[conybeare]

Just wanted to follow-up on this: when I took the pump apart, the weep hole was in fact clogged. It was clogged at the very, very top, right next the impeller. That would have been hard to detect by probing. It was really crusted over, too. Took a good jamming with a little screwdriver to break loose.

Good call, Rick and Inge!

[lukeman]

Yeah my drain hole was extremely clogged. It would have been nice for it to actually work as it would be preferable to drip on the ground rather than gunk up the coolant reserve.

My gasket was pretty much a glob of junk and took a bit of work to get all of it out.