blue smoke ?

[and]

hiya just joined and wonder if anyone can help ? i have recently bin ripped off possibly ? i have bought a 1982 gl1100 interstate 45000 miles on clock, starts first time no probs but after couple of miles of riding im getting blue smoke out of both exhaust , seems worse out of left hand side. not sure if its valve guides, rings, or head gasket. also there is water coming out of a pipe underneath could it be the overflow as the header tank seems overfull and is this related to the other problem.

[thrasherg]

As you probably know, blue smoke means you are burning oil, that can be due to several things, worn rings, worn valve seals, etc, its unlikely to be a head gasket as you will usually get poor idling if the head gasket has failed to the point that oil is getting in to the combustion chamber.. apart from creating smoke it's not doing any real harm to the bike (as long as you keep the oil level correct) but is a nuissance.
Without knowing what pipe you think the water is coming out of, it's hard to say what the leak might be, it could be the overflow pipe from the header tank, to be sure remove the excess water from the tank and see if it stops coming out the pipe, but it could also be the water pump failing, there is a bleed hole that allows water to leak out of the pump to indicate the seals have failed and the water could be running down from the bleed hole onto the pipe and fooling you into thinking it's coming from a pipe!! Hence our need to know what pipe you think the water is coming from. If you could post some pictures of the pipe and water it would help.

If the bike has been well looked after, I really doubt the rings are worn at 45,000miles, but I could believe the valve stem seals have hardened with age and are now leaking oil (Has the bike stood unused for long periods of time?).. The only way I know of is to remove the head and check the seals (You probably don't want to do that just yet!!). See if anyone else has any suggestions.

Gary

[dingdong]

Are you sure it's blue smoke? Sometimes it's difficult to tell black from blue. Pull your plugs and see if they are oil fouled. If you are burning that much oil they will be oily and the exhaust tips will be oily also. I would think that if the seals are bad it would smoke even at start up and not just after a few miles. Almost sounds like your choke might be sticking and blowing fuel out. How does it run when the smoke starts? Until you do some more checking it will be difficult to diagnose.

[virgilmobile]

This may sound odd...but a recent bike I worked on did that,and it was blue smoke.I found out that someone filled the cylinders with ATF to stay off cylinder rusting while in a long storage.Well that worked but it dumped a bunch of it into the headers also.When the bike warmed up a little,out poured the smoke.Thats just one case.If the plugs are sandy brown,the motor is running OK.Sooty black is a overload of fuel.Oily is just that,It's burning oil.Look at the plugs first after a good 20 mile hard ride.Remember the odometer doesn't show the 100,000 digit,so,like my 1000,it is conceivable that it may have 145,000 or even 245,000 miles on it.By the way,I replaced the whole exhaust system rather than trying to clean the ATF out of it.I had an extra one.