Oil pressure
 

Hi guys,
I have a problem , bike is a 95 xt600e, new to me, changed the oil today with filter, took out 3 litres, put 3 litres back in and a new hiflo filter. Went to bleed filter housing and nowt came out ! Took the filter housing back off checked orings etc but filter was dry. Put it all back together, pulled the plug and spun her for ages on starter, filter still dry. Pulled clutch cover off and oil pump gears are perfect and engaged. Get air pushing out of vent and drain bolt on filter housing.
I am a bit experienced with xt 600's, i have a 84 600 kick start and withing seconds of kicking her over oil spurts out of the vent hole after oul and filter changes, and i have had many xt250's with basically same filter housing and general moter architecture and not had a problem like this. Do these things airlock ??

Now very worried that something bad has gone wrong !
Any help, advice gratefully recieved.
Mark

Did you start the bike and let it run or just doing the turn of engine? When starting engine i always check the oiltank to see that oil is flowing system.

Hi , yes i did have the motor ticking over waiting for oil to appear at the filter case bleed. Then i pulled the plug and decided to use the starter as i didnt want to destroy the cam

Ok, open oiltank and check if oil is returning, you can undo the return line and hold finger on for checking if there is pressure/oil coming back.And if you worry for the camshaft open inspection and check if there is new oil or dry inside.

You can also take one of the valve inspection caps off and squirt a bunch of oil in all directions to get some oil up there for the time being, it won't get everywhere but will help. I always soaked my filters with new oil before installing so at first startup it is already filled and doesn't slow the oil down for even a little bit.

Maybe pour some oil down the vent hole to see if it will help prime the pump.

Thanks for replies folks.

When i was cranking on starter the oil level in the tank went up and started to overflow, so i guess that could be oil flow or air pushing the oil out.
I did try to squirt oil from a can into the oil galleries in the filter housing and that started to push small drops of oil out but maybe i should turn the engine backwards to pull that oil into the pump ?
I will get back to the problem on thursday, have left the bike with the oil cover off and tank full and will see how the land liesfrom there.
The engine was reputedly built up by mr lambeth and has done very few miles since and when i pulled clutch cover off it looked very clean and tidy in there with some odd marks engraved on gear drives (numbers and dots etc).
Any more ideas gratefully recieved and i will report back on thursday when i get back from switzerland.
Mark

so , finally got to the bottom of the problem.
on the delivery side of the pump (not the scavenge side) the oil comes up to the oil filter via a chamber, this chamber is closed off by a small plate and screw inside the crankcase. This plate was slightly lose so that at low revs oil was not getting fully up to the filter.
Thanks to advice from Dave Lambeth we were able to tighten this up by pulling the alternator rotor off and screwing it in.

Bike now fine, not noisy at the top at all and great oil pressure.

Weird problem but proves the point that understanding how these bikes work is better than hoping and guessing. It took a few days to trace the issue but all fixed now.

Grateful thanks to David Lambeth (who took a call at 5.30pm on a Thursday night) and to those who took the time to post advice and ideas

Thats not good at all to hear, never know when it can happen to the engine. You dont have any picture of this, would be nice to really understand what you did.

Weird problem, glad your engine is ok.

Thanks for sharing the info. +1 on the pic if you have one, I have been riding XT's for a long time and have never heard of this problem before.

SORRY, THOUGHT OF DOING PICTURE AFTER I HAD FINISHED:oops2: BUT SEE PDF ATTACHMENT

Wrong one , bad day today !!

Thanks alot! Side cover off and its possible to check this or more removing?

need to pull alternator cover on lhs of motor and pull the alternator rotor off.
Once the rotor is off you will see an opening through which you can see the screw and plate very easily and get a phillips on it.

:thumbup1:

As always difficult to say, the Po had rebuilt the motor so there's always the chance he put the plate on but forgot to torque it, as soon as I explained the findings Dave Lambeth knew exactly what I was talking about, it's right next to oil pick up at bottom of the engine, when he does a rebuild he used an Allen bolt with blue loctite. I'm no engine builder but I am a chemical engineer and understand the principle of pumping and I just couldn't get to a logical reason why I couldn't get pressure at the oil filter which is why I kept digging into the engine.
So next time you pull an engine apart maybe this will avoid one of our members having a very bad day !!!!
Great forum and again we xt guys are very lucky to have Dave Lambeth in our country......top man