2008 concours, 99,000 miles, PC3, purchased in 2008
Problem: alot of white smoke & a little oil from exhaust
My son riding a tiger800 & I left on a 2000 mile trip on Saturday- 250 miles from home , riding on hwy@75mph, son pulls up next to me and indicates to check gauges, I see nothing wrong- he then motions to pull over.
Advises that he is smelling & has seen a puff of dark smoke followed by white smoke - checked heat gauge/OK, checked oil-full/no dilution from coolant, checked coolant overflow/low but still 1" in bottom
started back up & revved the engine to 3k- instantly filled two lanes of hwy with thick white smoke, as we were 2miles from Caldwell, TX - rode bike at 1500rpm to Oreilly's in town- engine sounded good but still smoking. Clerk advised there was a Kawasaki shop two blocks away. As I tried to start the bike, the engine would not turn over- put on center stand & used rear tire to manual turn engine over- good compression & resistance .
started bike with no starting engine problem but a lot of white smoke and a small amount of oil from exhaust- rode two blocks to dealer which was closed for the holiday.
Son rode back 250 miles, got pickup & trailer, made it back home at midnight. Checked all fluids-oil ok, coolant low but still in engine as I found out pulling engine. also had 8oz of oil from the air box drain ( have never had that before,always used paper air filters chg every yr)
Pulled plugs 1,2,4 normal #3 had white ceramic & clean tip, where the others were dark brown with black tip.
Thinking a blown head gasket? ( have never heard of this problem on any of the forums)
waiting now on getting my service manual from a different location, to proceed to remove the head.
Would appreciate opinions?
Back from trip, with service manual- which states to do a compression cyl ck- bought a comp kit for mc's but the adapters didn't fit , so we could only hold the gauge down manually
cyl#1 = 140psi cyl#2=145 cyl #3 = 150 cyl #4 = 250 with alot of oil
Bought a used 2009 engine, low mileage, cyl compression test shows all cyl within 5% of 140 psi, will install & let you know how it goes