Hitchcocks Forum

I have a 2005 bullet 500, kickstart, 4 speed model with 3000 km up, i.e. just run in. I have been using the bike regularly for runs with no problems, until last Sunday. After a run of about 30 miles ( fairly spirited, but not motorway or flat out riding), I arrived at my destination, only to find the rear of the bike dripping with oil, and not a drop in the sump. . I had a look at the bike today, the scavenge seemed ok, it appears the catch can filled up, and the oil spilled over into the air filter box, and then over the back end. I can see how excess oil could get dumped out via the breather, but surely not the entire contents of the sump? . This has really shaken my confidence in the bike. I have read the Technical notes, so I have a good grasp of the problem. The last time this happened to me was back in 1973 on a Triumph 5TA with a worn oil pump, and following a sustained motorway trip, so I was quite appalled to have it happen on a low mileage machine. Anybody else had this happen ?

The actual sump should only ever have about 30ml of oil in it at any one time. The oil tank should have plenty in though.

Semantics aside. There are a couple of different configurations of breather/catch can in later bullets.

Does your breather come off the crankcase just below the right hand side of the barrel or does it come from a stub in the top of the oil tank. Does it have a return leg back to a stub in the side of the timing chest?

Conceivably,(assuming it breathes from the oil tank and has a return hose) if the duckbill in the catch can were to block and the non-return valve in the return hose to the timing chest were to fail, it could pressurise the engine and force all the oil back up into the catch can from the timing chest.

When the straight duckbill brather hose on my 350 bullet got trapped and folded over, it farted out massive amounts of oil from every orifice, including lots from around the tappet cover suggesting the timing chest literally fills up with pressurised oil in such a situation.

+1 to the breather issues. The first time I gave my old 2005 Electra-X some stick on the motorway a blocked main breather pipe was causing all the engine oil to be forced up the pipe from the back of the timing chest, where the secondary duck bill totally failed as a one-way valve, through the catch can and out into the air filter box and from there all over the back of the bike.

Try running a short piece of right-angled hose off the hose-tail on top of the oil tank (the breather connection) to a proper non-return valve, with a longer piece of hose from there to e.g. the end of the rear chain guard.

A.

Thanks for the advice, and you are quite right about the sump., I should have said the oil tank !! The breather hoses do come from the right of the engine, and the return hose leads in to the timing case. I will take out the whole breather set up, and check the one way valves. I wonder if the uprated oil pump would be a good idea ?

An uprated pump isn't going to stop the problem you describe, might even exescerbate it slightly.

It's not necessarily a bad thing to do though because the breathing issue is something separate which ought to have its own solution.


I've had those breather hoses totally clogged with semi-solid emulsified oil before today.

On a separate note, did it run for long with no oil in the tank? If your oil tank ran dry, check the big end floating bush didn't cop it. Look for loads of metallic dandruff in your oil filter, fingers crossed there won't be any.

Oil filter clear, thankfully. I was thinking that if the breather hoses were clear plastic, it would give you a bit of advance warning, you would see the oil building up before a catastrophic leak. A quick glance down while stopped might do it.

Careful routeing of breather pipes helps, so that there is no dip where the pipe-blocking gloop can settle. Best bet is to rip most of the factory system out and start again, clear or opaque piping is up to you.

A.

I'll second what Adrian said.

I had a 2005 that I loved, until a falling oak tree killed it. I bought it in 2007 with about 2500 miles. The seller was in the Los Angeles area; I live near San Francisco, so a bit over 400 miles away. Being totally ignorant of things Bullet, I decided to ride it home. To make a long story short, I had *exactly* the same experience, but my first inkling was a terrible clatter from the engine. The problem was indeed a buildup of "mayonnaise" in the tube. The fix (thanks, Tim Busby!) was to re-route the tube so that there were no dips (i.e., monotonic uphill run to the catch can). I refilled the oil and ran the bike another 7 years and 18,000 miles until the clatter reappeared as the big end bearings finally gave up the ghost. A couple of years and 2,000 miles later (2016), the oak tree fell on the motorcycle shed and totalled the bike. Iron-barrel bikes in "military" trim are virtually unobtainable here in California, so I now have a 2017 C5 in "desert storm" paint with aftermarket "pegasus" style pannier bags.

What an interesting anecdote, tjubtile. I am fairly new to Bullet ownership, all my other bikes are Japs ( and not devoid of problems, either), but the Bullet is in a league of its own when it comes to these idiosyncrasies, eg, I only recently learned of the need to position the piston at TDC when leaving the bike idle for a while. I checked the breather hoses, and there was a small amount of "mayonnaise", and the oil return from the catch can seemed sluggish, so I blew it out, and a blast of oil came out, so maybe that was the problem. At least I have avoided falling oak trees !!