I'm showing some black oily residue on the top of my motor and I'm wondering if it needs to have the head gasket replaced. I had it overhauled about 20 hours ago and I'm wondering if they just didn't get the gasket seated correctly or if it was defective.

Any ideas? Is it a hard thing to do? I'm fairly handy, but I don't want to screw anything up.

 

its pretty easy to do i just did it. took the front plastics off. took gas tank off,(does not need to be completely removed just unbolted and you can move it out of the way) then cleaned the top of engine really well with compressed air and surounding area, removed head then changed gasket. put new one on. put head back one retorque nuts down in criss-cross patern, i believe 20 lbs.. then put everything else back on.

note.. coolent will come out everywhere when removing head.

i think i covered it all, anyone else feel free to correct me if you think i done it wrong

 

Is it really oil around the sparkplug or the head gasket?

 

i did that but still had some come out when i pulled the head off

 

Thanks for the help, I'll check to make sure it's not coming from the spark plug, but I'm pretty sure its around the gasket. I'm glad to hear that it's not too hard to do.