Previous Owner Shenanigans and General Repair, Part 6

Part 6, general condition and stuff I still need to fix.

Carburetion
This bike has the stock "ham can" air cleaner, but one of the PO's took it upon themselves to do the popular exacto-knife-the-backing-plate-to-pieces, which allows a bit more air in.  You can't see it with the cover in place fortunately.  But it looks pretty proffessional when you take the cover & the filter off  ~_-    And look at that bright orange ignition wire snaking through there!

So, I already have a replacement setup, more on that in another post, when I actually put it on.  But aside from that, it runs rough until it is really, really warmed up, like 10 minutes, even with driving the 2nd 5.  Now, I know that it can take a while, but its kind of ridiculous.  Since this bike is now 13 years old, and the muffler & air cleaner aren't stock, I'm going to take it to a local shop to clean out the carb and rejet it if necessary.  I'm fairly mechanically inclined, having worked on every car I've owned, but messing with carburetors is absolutely no fun.

Mufflers:
Nate at Backroads wasn't sure, but he thinks the mufflers are Screamin Eagle.  Now, they have the HD logo script, but not the SE.  I don't even know what SE mufflers from the time look like, but I know new ones I've seen say Screamin Eagle.  But these do say they aren't for highway use, and they're definitely louder than stock, so thats a good sign right? (more on the effects of that in #2).  At first I thought they might be stock mufflers with the baffles removed, but I can see the baffle way down in there.  And the rear pipe is starting to blue, bummer!  Also, another oddball thing, is that for several years on sportsters, this year included, there was a cross over pipe right near the collectors by the heads.  I think it looks kinda dumb, and Harley changed it in 2004 I think, but my bike is myseteriously missing this bar.  Now, its not like they can just take it off, or there would be 2 big holes.  The pipes looks like they're just plain old pipes with no crossover, which is fine.  The problem is that the heat shield have the little notch/indent for the crossover.  So when I go to wrap these up, I'm worried its going to look stupid, and people are going to say "hey tard, your pipes are crushed right there" or something.

 

I plan to paint the tank & fenders.  As I was doing something, maybe I was checking how much fuel I had, I noticed the inside of the fuel tank may be a problem.

You can see the vent tube coming up in this pic, and its kinda difficult to tell, but whatever coating it had, is crackly-peeling off.  So when I take it off, I'll prbably do the 3M treatment that cleans it out and recoats it, although its kind of expensive for acid & paint...
The Oil Leak
Nate over at Backroads said they had spent some time fixing a nasty oil leak.  I stopped asking for details when I started getting into the bike.  Whatever they did, it didn't address this.  Harley's and most cruisers use a dry-sump oil system.  This means oil is stored in a tank instead of chillin at the bottom of the engine (under the seat for the most part), and its pretty rare in non-cruiser motorcycles, and really rare in cars.  This means there are all kinds of external oil lines and breather lines.  From the oil tank on the right side under the seat, a rubber oil line comes across to the left side, where it attaches to an L shaped plastic piece.  Then another line runs down to a 3 way junction.  Heres the parts diagram picture:

This picture kind of looks from the front.  It leaks somewhere around here.  The brilliant Harley design for draining the oil is here.  Instead of a drain plug like a car, a tube runs from that 3 way junction to a nipple thingy (technical term) on the frame, where it deadends, and has a screw clamp to keep it tight.  So oil basically fills this "drain tube" and then basically ignores it as it makes its way from the oil tank to the oil pump.  the 3 way junction is supposed to be the lowest point in the system, so that when you pull the drain tube, amazingly enough, it all drains.  Why the dumb fram dead-end?  Why not some kind of petcock? 

Anyways, so the drain tube dead ends at the frame and uses a screw-type hose clamp, like I said.  But the rest of the clamps are pinch-type hose clamps that are really only one-time-use things.  So as you can see in this very technical picture, that the oil is leaking around the 3 way junction plasticy piece, maybe up at the 1st junction and just running down:

In the pic, you can see how oil slowly wells up and hangs out on the bottom of one of those pinch clamps, and slowly does this:

That's sitting about a week.  Not cool.  Since I don't know where the leak is, and this is the lowest point in the system, I bought all 16 or so of the clampos from Harley, only $1 each, and plan to take the whole stupid thing apart and replace all the hose clamps properly.  I really hope it works because I'm going to use some expensive synthetic stuff that was on sale at cycle gear, and I'd rather not expensively lubricate my garage floor.  Hopefully, the oil lines are in good shape, or I'll have to replace some of those.  They look fine on the exterior from what I can see, other than being filthy, but they don't look cracked.  We'll see.

Other than those few items, I still plan to replace the shift shaft seal (and a little washer next to it), and the primary cover seal.  I'll be painting the primary cover wrinkle black after I pull it off.  More on that in the next post.