I have been reading on this Savage website about the drain hose breather that is visible at the bottom of the bike.

After a few long trips, I decided to pull the plug at the end of the hose to see what waste residue had collected  (the drain hose came with a plug at the end of the hose).  There was up to an ounce of thin oily residue waste.  From this website, I read that this is quite normal, especially with freeway speed driving.


These are my questions:

I couldn't find anything in the Suzuki user manual or shop manual about draining the breather drain hose (I may have just missed it, but I sure couldn't find anything about it).  I assume that if I didn't pull the plug, the liquid waste would accumulate in the hose until it would reach the upper end of the hose and consequently contaminate whatever the upper end of the hose is attached to.  This seems to me not a good thing!  What would have happened if the waste residue would have continued to accumulate?

I did see a 'cleaning/inspection' write up about the drain hose in the Clymer's manual.  But it didn't say how often to drain it.  How often do you pull the plug to drain the hose?

Finally, would it hurt to just not put the plug back into the bottom of the hose, and just let the waste residue fall to the ground as it is produced, rather than plugging the hose back up where it will then start collecting again?  Seems simpler to me.

Thanks for your help.

Ron G

Another problem with leaving the cap off...is it will allow unfiltered air to flow up into the carb inlet.

It is best to use the plug as it is supposed to be used.....drain it when you change the oil.

If you didn't drain it, it would take a very long time for too much oil/water to flood the air cleaner box.....but it is best to drain it instead of ignoring it.

FWIW, when I worked at a Honda dealer in the 70's they sent out a service bulletin warning that the most carcinogenic chemical we could deal with on the bikes was the jiz coming out of that breather tube.
Put on your Nitrile gloves, boys and girls, when you empty that hose  

Overfilling the oil usually loads up the airbox faster. As does running the motor balls out for extended periods of time.

Most petroleum products are carcinogenic. I think even changing your oil is supposed to be bad for you.

Chiming in late... but after flooding the air box with fuel from the carb overflowing twice, I decided to leave the plug out and just let it barf whenever it wants.  Isn't the drain before the filter?  So anything that could get sucked in through the drain tube would just get filtered out before hitting the carb?  Or should I put the plug back in?

All this modern stuff of putting the breather into the air box to get filtered and have the oil drain out.

Back in in the '60's, I had a Ducati 250 Scrambler. The Ducati standard was to stick a 3/4" diameter 3 foot log clear plastic hose on the crankcase breather (down on the crankcase and not up on the head) and route the hose up along the frame and along the rear fender mounting frame tube. The hose ended at the back of the bike. No filter, just an open plastic tube.

The hose was long enough and angled up at such an angle that it was too high for oil to get blown out the hose. Probably also the volume of the hose was greater than the cylinder displacement, so I don't think the air getting huffed and puffed up and down the hose ever really made if from the outlet to the crankcase.