Hitchcocks Forum

Just picked up an Electra and it has excessive pressure in the oil tank and crankcase causing oil to be ejected from all breathers. What are the common issues? Bike has good compression.

Generally oil being pumped out of breather's would be blow by
But you say you have good compression
So let's look for a breather issue (a well known problem)
There's lots of info on the forum about breather problems
It seems doing away with the whole catch can system is the way to go
Hope this help's Dai

If it still has all the original breather gubbins on it, they were notorious for clogging up with emulsified oil & condensate - sometimes referred to as mayonnaise. Poor pipe runs would allow the gloop to back up in and block the pipes, meaning the crankcase pressure had to look for other exists, usually pumping loads of oil up the catch-can oil return pipe as it did so. From here said oil would overflow via the breather pipe from the catch-can into the air filter box, and from there all over the back end of the bike and/or the garage floor.

As my learned friend points out, this has taken up quite a bit of forum space down the years, more so now as a new crop of owners discover the delights of this model.

Various attempts have been made from ingenious to horrible bodges to sort this out. Keep it simple.

1. A short piece of hose with a 90° bend taken from the original breather pipes and fitted over the pipe union/hose tail on top of the oil tank;
2. A 10mm or ⅜" non-return valve, and
3. A longer piece of hose running along the rear chain guard to the back of the bike. Don't forget the hose clips.



There are also some Electra-Xs around with the old importer's own breather kit with a strange tin-can arrangement over the oil tank. Those pose a few issues for the unwary.

A.

Thanks for your responses. Will definitely look at the breather system as suggested.

I have an ongoing issue with it too and as Adrian advised lost of posts on here about it. I have done two things, firstly opened up the spigot on the crankcase (if yours has one) and also added the pipe as Adrian advises, to be fair neither has solved the problem and I know it needs a rebore so blow by it is! See attached needed a Stella can to catch the oil!!!

There is drilled hole high up above the oil level between the crankcase and oil tank, this is where the excess pressure comes from into the oil tank from the crankcase if you have blow by, there has been conversation on here about welding the hole up and only using the crankcase spigot as engine breather.



Good luck

Just a thought, they can still feel to have reasonable compression when cold but lose it when hot, mine is still hard(ish) to kick over when cold but the ring gaps (new rings) are all top limit+ from the packet so clearly a worn bore and thus blow by, maybe a top end strip is in order and some measuring?