no gasket, just rtv
no parts to buy, maybe head plug.
But it may also be the head gasket.  The head gasket can leak at the oil port and the oil show up at any of the head bolt.

I'd 1st clean and dry the area in question, start her up and track down the leak.  Anything else and you're gonna be in for a surprise.

The head cover can be pulled (usually) with the engine in the frame.

Alright, cleaned it up a bit so we can see what's going on:



Gave it some oil since it was on the low side of the looking glass...
intentionally tried the overfill trick, and went a bit too far... this is sitting on the side stand with the wheel turned left:



I ran it like this anyway because I wanted to get on with the test...
bike actually felt a little better than usual, and didn't leak from the fill cap (I cleaned that area too, including the cap).

So the test consisted of about 20 miles in 90 degree Austin heat... oil overfilled...
did about 10 miles in stop/start traffic, then 10 miles at an almost steady 90mph on the freeway.

I stopped to check it along the way (before the freeway)...
noticed minimal puddling on the ledge of the head almost immediately (very minimal, no dripping):



Then after I got home I checked it again and it's barely much worse...
there is a bit more (you care barely make out the milky line along the ledge), but it is growing slowly:



One thing I get from this test is that it's not really a high speed / high pressure thing... it's simply a slow/steady leak...
so the longer I ride, the more oil I use... doing highway speeds shouldn't make things any worse than if I was just riding around the city.

I don't think the gasket is "blown", it's just seeping... is this a metal gasket??

If so, I'm assuming if I keep it topped up I should be fine for the trip...
I could try to seal that ledge with Yamabond, but it's too slow of a leak to see exactly where it's coming from... it'd be a cheap band-aid at best.

Any of this make sense, or am I just fooling myself?

Mine was doing that as well.  I gently tightened all the head bolts and found a couple that weren't loose, but certainly weren't tight.  I haven't had problems since and that was about 8 months ago.

Best regards,

pg wrote on 07/10/15 at 17:15:34:


Huh, that's a really good point... my top motor mount came slightly loose a few times (usually after long trips at high speeds)...
took me a while to finally figure out what was making my steering squirrelly.

So if that came loose, there's a good chance these did too! Hot darn (I didn't write darn, lol)!

Just FYI, riding at 90 mph WILL burn oil.

If you're not fussed about a bit of oil gettig on your boots, I wouldn't miss out on a road trip for that little leak. Just keep an eye on the oil level. Maybe hit the car wash and degrease it when you get there?
Or, pull the rocker box off and reseal. Isn't hard and takes a couple hours. If you just smear the Yamabond around the outside, that's not going to do much good. The oil will just migrate around the back of it. Good luck.

I had that same area of oil leak a few weeks back. Cleaned it to find the actual cause of the leak and it turned out to be  the head stud nut located nearest to the spark plug. There was a thread on it. We figured out that stud was an oil passage and had a small gasket/washer under the nut and that was where the leak was from. I cleaned the area and pulled the nut and used a dab of rtv on the existing gasket and it solved the problem. It was a very minimal leak that didn't really seem to affect the oil level drastically. And as with yours riding condition didn't seem to make it any worse or better.
While I was in there I grabbed the clymers and went ahead and torqued everything back into spec. Found 2 ofeet the head bolts not as tight as they should be but not really loose enough to do damage.