Discourse has an app you can download and configure so that you receive notifications directly to your phone:
Yep. It’s called Discourse Hub:
Apple iOS app is here, and the Android app is here.
I plan to pick this up soon, and install with next oil change in about 1500mi, or just lay the bike on the left side to access the clutch.
Let me know if you’re in and I’ll see if I can get a group buy discount from CJ Designs, or at least save on shipping with a combined order.
IN List:
@Rich_Strauss
@LILDURT
If you are group ordering, I would be interested.
Website says he has 4 on hand. We’ll see if he’ll do a deal for us to make them all go away
And if this guy doesn’t want to deal I wonder if we could do this ourselves since it appears to just be the stock jet drilled out slightly (like this guy does). The stock jets are only $9 - might be worth experimenting on one. Any machinists in the house?!
@MoJoe has a drill press.
I manage schedules for our machine shop at work. I may be able to bribe someone to sneak them in.
Once everyone gets their oil pressure increased it will be interesting to see if any of our oil pressure sensors start leaking. Apparently that’s a thing.
@anichols Has had that issue but don’t know if he’s done the spring
Oil pressure sensor is definitely a thing and once it starts it doesn’t stop. My experience was ~8k miles on the bike before it failed - failure was trip-ending, the leak was too high volume to continue the ride and had to be towed out. Replaced the sensor and it failed on the next trip (despite having put 200+ miles on it locally to try to trigger leaks).
What I learned in this process:
I opted to do this. Stripped the sensor down, tapped the oil pathway, cleaned it well, then put a bolt into it (I didnt want to chance JB weld breaking off into the oil system) and then covered the top with JB weld. There are a million stories online of folks using bolts or other mechanisms to just cap this off and discard the sensor. The sensor itself is a fairly small bolt diameter with a very wide flange - difficult to replace the dimensions exactly - and I didn’t want to deal with any potential damage to the head by over/under torque, wanted to use the same exact bolt.
Anyone who has actually had the sensor indicate oil pressure loss was already past the point of engine damage from what I could tell - so I don’t feel like I’m taking much of a risk here vs. the obvious failure risk.
Thx for the detail. Have you done the spring upgrade? IE, does the spring upgrade increase the chances of this failure
No, but I have replaced the cam chain tensioner - which is something a few folks attributed to this failure. I replaced w/ the dirt tricks tensioner. The stock tensioner relies on oil pressure to keep tension on the chain - it also is prone to failure - and the dirt tricks version blocks the oil pathway that feeds the tensioner. So the thinking is that this slightly increases oil pressure triggering the failure.
Seems like a weak argument to me, but the two events did correlate very closely. So maybe swapping the tensioner is a way to boost oil pressure? Dunno.
Note that the tensioner sits just out of the bottom of the frame of this picture - below the oil sensor, so the probability of these two sitting inline in the oil circuit is quite high.
So would you say a good course of action would be:
If the oil sensor is an eventual point of failure, and you’ve found a fix, seems like a good route to go to avoid having a failure in the field
Sounds like carrying a spare sensor might be a good idea. If the sensor develops a leak swap it in the field. Once home, drill and tap the bad sensor ala A. Nichols method and carry that in case the sensor starts to leak again.
I am really crazy and not doing a thing to the engine. I bought it new and it is completely stock (except arrow exhaust). I broke it in “properly” and change oil every 2k. I also warm it up to “normal” temp every time prior to riding. This will be a good test to see how things go riding it reasonably hard as such. Time will tell…
I think it would be more efficient to just carry a spare engine
Before you carry a spare sensor I would encourage you to pull out your field toolkit with your motor hot and that shiny new sensor and try to do the swap. Make sure you pour some oil all over the sensor before you attempt the fix. I’ll pass. Fix it in the garage.
FWIW - this was my strategy on the 2nd trip. I had what I thought were all the bits for a field repair. It didn’t hold. I didn’t carry a full sensor because it’s tough to get out w/out more tools than I typically carry. Even had I carried a spare - the second failed hundreds of miles after replacement - my trips are longer than a spare sensor might last.
Also - you are going to need to plan for the oil you’ll have lost when you discover the failure - which isn’t obvious till you stop the bike and spot the oil drip.
If you wanna leave it stock that’s also totally fair - your call.
Rich - to your questions:
Also - since folks are probably wondering “Well, how much oil do you lose when that sensor fails?”. I don’t recall exactly where we were at but it was north of Gypsum when it failed both times - about the same area. Second time it failed I decided to just ride as far as I could get - checking oil regularly along 70. I got to Idaho Springs and there was no visible oil in the sight glass - I stopped and had the wife bring oil. That was with a field repair in place which was limiting oil flow out of the sensor.
I think it leaks faster when idle than at high RPM but not totally sure. The leak isn’t a drip - it’s more of a stream.
Good info. Sounds like I need to modify my sensor and just not worry about it. Did you have some fancy machine shop wizardry when you did yours or just a vice and a drill press??
Just a vice and a drill by hand. There’s already a bore there, you just need to make it match the tap/bolt you have to put in it.
