I have a 2000 Savage all stock and 9,000 miles. I bought it not running and have taken it to the local Community College auto mechanic program to have it looked into. I'm just not good inside an engine. So they can get it to run with the throttle wide open, but it's blowing significant amounts of oil out the exhaust opening (pipe not attached yet). They are saying rings or head gasket. The head has been off and re-installed during their going over of it. It ran before I got it, the last owner rode it to work every day. The timing chain tensioner came off (surprise!) and that stopped him. I talked to Verslagen and got that taken care of and turned it over to the college. This is starting to get more expensive than I can afford to do. Help me move in the most likely direction thereby saving me from spending unnecessary time and money. Thanks in advance!

Well.....you should have come for help before you turned it over to the community college boys.  There most likely was no reason to take off the head (or was it the head cover they removed?).

Have you checked the oil level in the window on the bottom rear right side of the engine?  Is the oil level high?  Does the oil smell like gasoline?

Hello?????  Hello????  Is this thing ON????

Have you checked the oil level in the sight window?  Does the oil smell like gasoline?

http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1251932429/1

jasonmrye wrote on 01/14/15 at 09:50:36:


If the vacuum petcock fails, it can fill the crankcase with fuel, and run so much fuel into the vacuum line and causing the engine to run too rich.....and maybe only at full throttle can you get it to run.  Often the owner does not know the fuel has run into the crankcase.....as that is not a normal thing to expect on most motorcycles or cars.  When this happens it can result in oily fuel blowing out the breather tube and/or exhaust.

The head does get oil from a port at the right rear side of the cylinder.

The oil goes up along the right rear cylinder stud, up into the head, and then to the cam journals.  The Savage engine does not send an abundance of oil up there....and it had never squirted out of a head gasket.

It sounds like your folks may not have put the rubber head plug in the right front corner of the head....just above the cylinder stud.

Here is the drawing that show the path of the oil...you have to look closely to see the dark black lines with arrows.  The pink highlighted area comes from a discussion about adding an oil cooler....that is not relevant to this question (ignore the pink).  

Thanks Dave! I think we're on the right track here!