stripped oil drain plug

So, changed the oil for the second time on my 1982 KZ550-C3 today. The first time I did it, I couldn't tighten the drain plug to spec (27 ft-lb, i think) - it kept spinning around.

Today, when I pulled the drain bolt out, a bunch of engine thread went with it. Sucks that the bolt is harder than the engine

Anyway, after changing the oil there is now a steady drip from the drain bolt. I'm wondering what the best way to deal with this is. It looks like whoever owned the bike before me noticed this problem because around the drain bolt there was a bunch of some sort of blue compound. I rubbed a bunch of it away when cleaning around the drain to make sure there was nothing still stuck in there, but I think it was some selant that kept the oil from dripping out.

The question is, do I need to have someone retap that hole for me or is there some sort of selant I can put on/around the bolt to stop the drip and not worry about it? If the drain must be re-tapped, can anyone recommend a mechanic in the Chicago area who can do this for a reasonable price?

get a new pan or re-tap the threads to whatever plug you want to use. A tap & handle should not cost much. Just drill out the buggered threads clean & run your tap through.

Post edited by: oyasin, at: 2007/05/24 21:45

Not sure all info in this link applies to KZ550, but might give some ideas.

Bolt

Good luck!

yeah you have to be careful(im guessing the po wasnt) with steel plugs in an aluminum oil pan. im guessing the blue stuff was silicone. your pan will have to come off and any machine shop could fix it a couple ways. either tap it to another size larger to a common sized plug, or weld it up and tap it to the original size. if you want a good enough for now fix, just drain all the oil, clean the plug/threads with brake/parts clean and apply some silicone to the threads. screw it in as best you can and let it set before you fill it up with oil. make sure you dont use too much or it could go all thru your engine plugging up oil passage ways and then you would be in big trouble. (cams like their constant flow of oil:pinch: ) you would have to re do this every time the plug came out

Been there, done that, and have the t-shirt to prove it too! :pinch:

If you go with the more permanent fix of drilling and tapping the hole to a larger bolt size, you should as stated remove the oil pan to do this so you don't end up with aluminum particles floating around in there and creating more probs for you.

No clue if it gets hot enough where you are in the summer, but if you're going to pull the oil pan to remedy this prob, you might as well "upgrade" to a GPz550 oil pan and integrated oil cooler.
The pan is a direct bolt-on (they use the same gasket and o-rings), and all you'd need to do is fab a simple bracket up to mount the oil cooler itself.

You can do a search on eBay to try and find either a GOOD used standard KZ550 oil pan, or a GOOD oil pan (and cooler) for a 550GPz.
Although lots of folks have had great success doing the bolt hole repair, buying another pan sure beats tapping the hole and crossing your fingers that it holds up.

Been there done that and the first rule is DONT WORRY. It's not the end of the world and not a big deal. You dont need a mechanic.

This www.gadgetjq.com/stripped_oil_plug_thread.htm would likely have worked for me for about $5 if my drain plug had not already been tapped out to 1/2 inch. I really would'nt recommend the "universal" plug I tried in pattons link as it would loosen up every few days.

I did find a 14mm tap and handle. This was the first time I ever used a tap and was surprised at how easy it was. I took the exhaust off. I put the tap in the handle and gave it a turn. It was like putting a knife through butter. Took it out and wiped the metal filings off. Repeated the proceedure until I had a new drain hole. I flushed the old oil throught the system to get rid of any bits that might remain and then replaced with fresh That was in March or early April. I should mention that I had already bought another drain bolt at an auto parts store. Go check out whats available. They are cheap.
Eventually I got an oil pan from a member here. Dont be afraid of tapping a new hole either with one of those self tapping drain plugs from Oil Tite or with a conventional tap. Guaranteed childs play.

Post edited by: JR, at: 2007/05/25 00:08

Back when I was wrenching on Hondas & Acuras, we had people coming to us after the quick lubes stripped their oil pans out. We pulled the pan and welded a Forged Nut to the pan, topped it off with a New drain plug and crush washer.

It's a lifetime fix since the forged nut is Harder than the drain plug it's self. You can do this on yours, but I am not sure about welding steel to aluminum, you'll need a Good welder that knows what he is doing.

If mine were to ever strip out this would be how it's repaired.

HTH,

Ron

thanks everyone for your suggestions.

For now, I backed the drain plug out until I could just see some thread, put a bead of silicone around it using the tiny nozzle on the silicone tube and tightened the bolt in place as much as is possible.

This seems to have stopped the dripping, and I didn't have to completely remove the plug so I got to keep the fresh oil I just put in.

As long as this holds, I think I'll just keep this until its time for the next oil change. Then, I'll be ready with one of those self-tapping plug JR recommended. This seems the easiest thing to do, and I'll save the more drastic solutions for later if the self-tapping plug doesn't work.

Keep a real close eye on your temp repair and check it regularly.
The last thing you want is the plug to fall out and a whole pile of oil land on the street right where your back wheel is about to go.

igor47 wrote:

thanks everyone for your suggestions.

For now, I backed the drain plug out until I could just see some thread, put a bead of silicone around it using the tiny nozzle on the silicone tube and tightened the bolt in place as much as is possible.

This seems to have stopped the dripping, and I didn't have to completely remove the plug so I got to keep the fresh oil I just put in.

As long as this holds, I think I'll just keep this until its time for the next oil change. Then, I'll be ready with one of those self-tapping plug JR recommended. This seems the easiest thing to do, and I'll save the more drastic solutions for later if the self-tapping plug doesn't work.

I know its riding weather buttttt ,,,,,,,,
You are just asking to crash and burn ,,,,,,,
And we want all our "K" riding friends to be around for a long time .

Any GOOD bike shop or machine shop should be able to repair that BETTER than stock for less then $50 with a new stock drain plug .

Yes, you can drill and retap to a larger size. What I did was remove oil pan and drill and tap for a heli coil. Back to original size but now has steel threads and will last forever!

After going around to some of the many automotive stores in Chicago staffed by utterly incompetent morons (uhh, we don't have motorcycles in our computer system), I gave up on the quest to try to find a self-tapping oversize drain plug.

Instead, I ordered some of these:http://www.timesert.com/ which are like helicoils but solid steel. They have drain plug kits based on your drain size, but they're a bit expensive. I just ordered some inserts and the tool which puts the inserts in and got my own tap and drill bit for the tap.

It turns out that my drain plug had already once been retapped! It definitely wasn't the 12mm that it should have been. Thankfully, it wasn't retapped so big that I couldn't tap a nice new thread for the timesert. The last few threads of the timesert are pushed into the surrounding metal by the insertion tool so its locked into place forever. Now my drain plug is nice and tight.

The problem came when I decided to reuse the old oil pan gasket - bad idea. The oil just POURED out of the bike. Now I have to take off the right-side exhaust system and pull the pan again to put in the new gasket.

Other lessons learned: when doing maintenance on your motorcycle on a busy street in Chicago, its a bad idea to leave your tools sitting unattended "just for a second." All in all, this repair has been an incredible pain in the butt, but at least there was absolutely nothing but a tiny bit of grime floating around in my oil pan - no metal shavings at all!