Q: My 2003 Kawasaki Z1000 recently left a rather large and alarming pool of oil on my garage floor. It did scare me a little because it’s never given me any problems in the past.
So I cleaned the bike then ran it and found the oil was coming from behind the front sprocket cover, which I then removed to find out exactly what the problem is. And it’s that large seal behind the front drive sprocket that is pissin’ out oil.
My nearest Kawasaki dealer told me that I’d have to split the crankcases to change the seal, which will obviously be expensive. So my question is, do you think I could pull out the old seal and just ‘shove’ a new one in there without causing any more damage. Is it worth a try or am I just being a silly old bugger?
Daniel O’Shea
A: If we just pushed a new seal in at our workshop and the bike came back still leaking oil we would look like incompetent fools, right?
But saying that I have heard of people doing what you said and getting away with it, so it might be worth a try but don’t say I told you to do so, please.
It’ll be hard to pull out the old seal to begin with because it has a lip or ridge at the back of it to hold it in place. So once you get it out and then try to fit the new one I’d cover the edge of the new seal with silicone, which might help when you try to tap it in with a blunt device of some kind. If you damage the inner seal though, where the bush slides in behind the sprocket, you’ll be back to where you started, so be gentle and careful. But the correct way for a perfect job is certainly to split the cases – your call?
