TOPIC:

So, I'd been running the Z1 a bit.  The bowls were really whacked out, got them set properly and just tweaking a few other things while waiting for body parts to get back from the painter.  I'd probably run it a total of about 10 to 15 minutes over several starts.  The big relief was there were no strange sounds coming from the motor.... ran it up to 4 Gs after it warmed up when testing the charging system and still sounded healthy.  But I did notice some oil dripping from the bottom exhaust stud on #4 exhaust.  I traced it around to the 2nd bolt from the right on the intake side of the valve cover, where I found a hairline crack.  Ran it a couple more times and I could actually see oil oozing out of the crack after the motor got heated up.  So that was the culprit.  Probably from the PO torquing the bolts too hard. I had some of that low melting aluminum brazing rod laying around in my tool box for several years so I thought I'd give it a try.  Cleaned it, ground out the crack and an area about 3/8ths surrounding it, heated it up with a propane torch and melted the rod in just like solder. I believe there's flux impregnated in the rod because I didn't use any and it flowed great. Left a bead I don't think I could knock off with a hammer and chisel. Anyway.. just wanted to tout those low temp aluminum brazing rods as they're a godsend in the right situations.  What's disturbing me though is while scraping off the old valve cover gasket, I noticed there was hardly any oil in the chambers around the buckets.  Bike is up on the center stand and should be pretty level but the only chamber that looked like it had enough oil was #4 on the exhaust side.  The rest of them were pretty thin.  Chambers around 1 and 3 buckets only had a couple drops in them, although the lobes for the corresponding sections of cams felt fairly oily..  So here's the thing... would sitting for ten days somehow cause all the oil to drain down out of the compartments somehow?  Each bucket should be surrounded with a pool of oil no matter how long the bike sat without being run, shouldn't it?  Now if the cams weren't getting oil and I ran the motor for a total of ten to fifteen minutes, there would have been some pretty nasty sounds coming out of head shouldn't there have been?  But the motor sounded perfect.  Also, there was enough oil in the intake side of #4 for it to leak out of a hairline crack so I know it's getting some oil. Now I'm afraid to start the motor again.  

Edit:  Please ignore the tiny scraps of old gasket laying on the shims.  I tried my hardest to keep the crap out while scraping off the old gasket but inevitably some ended up getting in.  Will be going through it all with a tweezers and a cotton swab later.

Remove all spark plugs, (don´t forget to disconnet your coils form ignition power) and turn the engine with the starter motor and valve cover removed. This is how i confirm oil pressure and oil flow on the top end after an engine rebuild. You will see all chambers around the buckets will fill up with oil very fast.

You can put an oil pressure gauge on the engine to measure pressure.  It's possible that one of the oil chambers is plugged or restricted.  If you turn the engine over with the valve cover off you should cover the head with plastic because you'll make a little mess.

Turned the engine over for 30 seconds without the valve cover on and the sparkplugs out.  Didn't worry about making a mess because not that much oil in there.  This is what I had after 30 seconds of cranking in the #4 intake chamber/

That is realy less than i expected!!! what about the other chambers?

They're about the same on the intake cam.  Exhaust cam seems to have plenty.
 

There's some up there it seems because I can see it around the buckets as they go up and down but no chamber on the intake side has the cam sitting in a pool of oil like on the exhaust cam.

There should be some oil spilling out of the in and ex cam bearing towers. It´s time to check your oil pressure.

wrote:

There should be some oil spilling out of the in and ex cam bearing towers. It´s time to check your oil pressure.
Checking oil pressure is good ,
  But I would be guessing  a buildup of  silicon in  oil gallery in cylinder and head .
This is from to much assembly  silicon  possible put around each of four  studs in corners of cylinder block
Only way to check is disassembly
Dave
 

It would be a shame to tear the engine down.  There are some easy things to do beforehand.

First, check oil pressure at the port on the RHS of the engine.  The book has the spec, but I believe it's around 2 to 3 psi.  If you show less than that then you may have an oil pump problem.
Second, drain the oil and check your filter to see if it's restricting.  The filter is normally under pressure.  A cheap filter can possibly collapse. 
Third, drop your oil pan and check to see if anything is blocking the strainer on your oil pump.

Lastly, is your dash oil light staying on when the engine is running?

wrote:

It would be a shame to tear the engine down.  There are some easy things to do beforehand.

First, check oil pressure at the port on the RHS of the engine.  The book has the spec, but I believe it's around 2 to 3 psi.  If you show less than that then you may have an oil pump problem.
Second, drain the oil and check your filter to see if it's restricting.  The filter is normally under pressure.  A cheap filter can possibly collapse. 
Third, drop your oil pan and check to see if anything is blocking the strainer on your oil pump.

Lastly, is your dash oil light staying on when the engine is running?
 

That sounds like a good idea.  I'll do all that today.  The oil light goes off as soon as the motor starts and never flickers after that.

Being that this bike has been a mystery since day one, I'm kicking myself for not paying more attention when I had the pan off.  I remember the screen was completely covered with some kind of crap but can't remember what the hell it was, either silicone or some kind of mush, like ground up wet paper or cardboard maybe.  I'm thinking it wasn't silicone because the cringe factor would have been X 10 if hit had been, and it was probably a cringe 4 or 5. It really was a  mess though. I remember thinking how I was glad I dropped one of the spacers from the cam tower down the tunnel so I was forced to drop the pan. So I agree Bill, I need to drop the pan again before I do anything else.  Would be nice to know what the PO was chasing when he was in the middle of... I guess you'd call it a restoration. 

Is there silicon squishing out around the head gasket?
Steve