I went to Winchester Bay Oregon for the first time this weekend. Great place to ride.

Anyway I was climbing Banshee hill which is really steep and long. At the top of the hill I looked back and noticed my exhaust was smoking. Once I leveled out it stoped.

I think maybe riding at that angle for the ~60 sec it takes to climb it may be rolling the oil back into the rear cylinder. What else could it be?

Has anyone else seen this?

 

White smoke is typically steam ... most of the time on these V Twins, that means head gasket... been there done that....

 

Yep that's right .. if it was oil getting into the combustion chamber you'd be seeing blue smoke ..

Did you get a smell of the exhaust?? If coolant is getting into your combustion chamber, it will smell kinda sweet. Hopefully it's not a split head [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-shocked.gif[/img] that wouldn't be good. Most likely a head gasket like Newbeatle said ...

 

But if it was a head gasket you think I would see the smoke all of the time.

 

It might be a slight leak and only really becomes apparent when applying a lot of power, such as when hill climbing

 

Mine likes to do this too. I only notice it if I do a wheelie for a long distance. That puts the front end up at a similar angle to what you are talking about. It is a thick form of smoke and clears right up when I let it sit and run level for a few seconds... I was guessing it was coolant getting in there but from where??? [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-confused.gif[/img]

 

What's the oil look like / smell like?

 

Before fixing my head gaskets, mine would leak ( white smoke ), when it was cold, at 1st start up, then after a few minutes, they would seal up ( no more white smoke )...

 

If you've managed to get water in your airbox recently, maybe when you were hosing it off, its possible its found its way into the motor. Try changing the oil and see if it goes away.

 

I didn't think about it, but KEVINM is right, there is that little sediment bulb at the bottom of the Prairies filter box ( I assume there is one on the Force ), it is in front of the carbs on my quad, if there was moisture in there, a very steep hill could cause that to run out & be sucked into the carbs... It should only happen once though, if this happened repeatedly, it is unlikely that that would be the cause...