How simple of a problem it was.

For about a month now I have had this brown GOO collecting on the left side of the cylinder head. It looked like an oil leak but I couldn't see where it was coming from and it was really thick brown and gooey. Sort of like the stuff you see on an old set of carburetors. I was afraid to investigate the problem, because of what I was scared to find. I looked at the head a couple of times but there was no clear place where oil could have been coming from. I thought I may have a cracked head or something because of the "apparent" point of origination. Today I got sick and tired of looking at it and decided to clean all the mess off. By now the whole left outside of the head and cylinders was a mess. Well guess what. It wound up being a loose #1 spark plug, and all the goo was coming from it. Unbelievable!

Don't take counsel of your fears!

That is great news. Ride on. Roy

I had what I thought was a ticking noise on my 550 that drove me near insane trying to find it. I spent days checking everything I could think of. I checked the cam chain tensioner, drained the oil and filtered it, looked in the pan for carnage. Put it on the center stand, spun the front wheel, spun the rear wheel. Removed the chain, inspected it, checked for tight links, soaked it overnight in ATF, cleaned, lubed and put back on. I finally decided to hell with it. I'm going to ride it until whatever is making the noise breaks, then I will know. I rode it for another 3 weeks before it was time to change plugs and oil. I grabbed the boot on plug #1 and thought "Why is the boot so loose?" Lo and behold, it was the whole plug that was loose! New plugs (properly torqued), fresh oil, NO MORE TICK! :ohmy:

I had a brownish black substance on the fins of my jugs a while back and for the life of me could not figure it out. Then it dawned on me a few weeks later. I had caught a floating plastic bag on the Interstate, it melted nicely to my motor. I thought I missed it but I guess I got it somehow. Simple things will stump you sometimes.