Help! White Smoke and Sticking Calipers

[roncg41677]

The oil did have a very strong gas smell. Now that I think about it it seemed really thin too. When I got the bike the PO had left the petcock sitting in the "PRI(me)" position. And, as I think I've said in another post, when I took off the carb at least one of the cylinders was completely full of gasoline, and the carb main jets were frozen partially open too. I'm still a bit of a newb at some of this.

I've only run the bike a total of 5-7 minutes or so. It's not ride-able because of the brakes. Is gas residue in the crankcase dangerous?

[coffee_brake]

Good on you for noticing!

Any petcock, when left on "prime" will just let gas flow and flow and flow into the carbs without stopping, thus bypassing the vacuum petcock completely. The vacuum setup lets gas flow when the engine is running but not when it's shut off. This is great when you just ran out of gas and need to get the engine re-started, but it is very bad for a bike that's been sitting for more than 5 minutes.
You now know that your petcock leaked gasoline into the carbs, which overflowed into at least one cylinder, and then the gas leaked past the pistons rings into the crankcase and made the engine waaaay too full of liquid, which was gas and oil combined. Gas in the oil is a bad thing.

Get those brakes apart and working, and then go for a little short ride, maybe 5-10 minutes, and immediately come home and drop that slightly gasy oil. No need to change the filter again unless you want to, but definately get the motor warm and drop that oil one more time to get the last of the gas out.

You did good to change it, if you change it again soon you will have nothing to worry about. Just don't run it for long like it is.

Those brakes--you can use a little of a kitchen S.O.S. brand cleaning pad, does a great job on metal without scratching. Also you can use a little of that stuff P.B. Blaster, it is effective on both metal and rubber to lubricate and protect. By now you need to lube your throttle and choke cables anyway, it will do good on those as well.

[roncg41677]

Just an update...

I took off the calipers and worked the pistons in and put them back on. I was surprised how easy it was to take them off. The bottom bolt on the front caliper was barely finger tightened on there. Good thing I messed with them at all !

I goofed in 2 ways though. I squeezed the front brake I guess with the bleeder screw opened or something and now I've got NO front brake. I never bleed the brakes on my car. I've never needed to, just changed the pads. But I had to open the bleeder screws to move the pistons, so there you go. Going to have to get some help putting that right.

I also left the ignition on and killed the new battery .

2 steps forward, one step back I guess .

[roncg41677]

Also the white smoke seems to have cleared up. Must have just been residue.