Repairing an oil leak

On the road up to Rikavacko lake, in Montenegro, I've ridden on a big flat rock, which  flipped over and blocked between the the bash plate and the ground. It was a big hit and I almost felt.

The bash plate has a triangular opening for changing the oil, which make the bashplate itself weaker. I wanted to weld it or to put some fiberglass on it before starting the trip, but I though it was not so necessary...

I realized immediately that the engine itself was hitted by the rock, a piece of the carter near the oil drain plug was broken. Nothing bad, the bike was not leaking oil. After the whole trip, when I've removed the bash plate for cleaning the bike I realized that there was some oil on it. At the beginning I thought it might have been some oil that remained on the carter after the oil change in Thessaloniki, but after a trip to Zurich, I realized that there was an oil leak.

No worries it was a very small leak, just few droplets per week.

So in order to repair it had to drain the engine oil first. Then I've cleaned the region of the carter where the oil was coming out.

On the red circle you can see a part of the carter that has been deformed by the hit with the rock.

On the red square there is the small missing part of the carter, nothing import.

I've passed a rough 60 sand paper on the area, cleaned it with brake cleaner (because it has pressure and it was easier to clean upside-down) and blown the whole regione with air pressure.

After this, the carter was ready for receiving the 2 components epoxy made by Kent. It is very expensive but it is extremely good: I've repaired a lot of different things with it, an air intake of a RGV250 carburettor aswell for example. It was time to be a Bastler and so I did my job:

Engineering at its finest.

It holds very well and it will last forever. It will make for sure difficult to separate the two carters, but I don't think I will every open them. Next post will be about the reinforced bash plate.