Hey all, I've been lurking for awhile and gleaning the wisdom this site has to offer, and now have run into an issue.

I have a '98 with about 8400 miles on it that I purchased a couple weeks ago. I've been going through and working on all the maintenance and whatnot with pretty good success until recently. Last week (~150 miles ago), I couldn't get the oil drain plug out to change the oil so I passed it off to a mechanically inclined friend, who got the plug out and changed the oil for me.  

This afternoon I started to take apart the valve timing cover on the left crankcase so I could adjust the valves and WHOOSH! Oil all over the garage floor. In retrospect, I'm guessing that my mechanically inclined friend overfilled my oil when he changed it.

So now what? The bike is still just draining from out the left crankcase. I figure move number one is to drain the whole bike and plan on refilling it to the proper level. Have I caused any major damage riding around with the oil level too high? Should I be taking apart that whole left crankcase (or some other part of the bike) and cleaning it out? TIA.

--Bugg

I estimate I lost about 1.5 cups of oil out the side of the case. Despite that, it was still overfull. Oops. (Just to soothe my ego here, I do want to point out that I wasn't the one that put the oil in). Anyways, I've drained it out into a clean bucket and refilled up to the correct mark.

Hypothetically speaking, what happens to my bike if the oil foams up? Thx,

--Bugg.

I have a large syringe with surgical tubing on the end of it. It comes in handy for a lot of things, one of which if I overfill the oil resevoir I can draw some oil out.