Make a New One

Whenever I start the bike, I sit back to listen and watch.  It makes funny sounds sometimes and every once in a while it drips fluids.  One day last spring I fired it up and about a minute later a steady stream of oil started flowing from the lower plastics.  Not good.

I turned it off, waited to check the oil level, and started it again.  More oil.  No ride that day so I started removing the lower plastics and pulled out the repair manual.  Turned out that an oil line running from under the crankcase to the oil cooler was leaking in the middle where the hard line joined a soft line.  I drained the oil and removed the banjo bolts at both ends.

Soft line in the middle with the spring around it.

The leak was at the right junction in the middle of the photo

I had done something like this on a car before so I knew I could chop out the soft line and replace it, but I checked for the price of a new one.  Ebay showed a couple of them for about $40 shipped.  Used.

So I pulled out the Dremel and some cutting blades.  There's a reason they sell those blades in tiny buckets of 50.  Any torsion in the blade tends to send shattered fragments flying at your eyes.  Sometimes if you look at one funny it'll break in half before you even start.

The cuts at both collars 

Two halves of a collar

Once I got it apart, it took a walk to the local auto parts store for a short length of the proper high pressure line and four tiny hose clamps.  I used four for redundancy - two is probably fine.

I cleaned the underside of the bike, installed the repaired hose, filled the case with oil, and started off for a ride.  The whole process actually took a couple of days, but still no leaks 1,000 miles later.

My Dad's sister swears that Grandpa would break or lose things just so that he could manufacture more.  Good idea.