Oil weeping from rocker cover
 

On my 2016 RX3 I have developed an infrequent bit of oil weeping from the exhaust side of the engine from the rocker cover. That cover is sealed with RTV from the factory. I doesn't happen all the time but seems more frequent when either doing long high speed freeway runs or a bunch of off-road riding. The amount of oil is minor and hasn't created a noticeable decrease in the oil volume. It just gets dusty on the front of the engine

I called and spoke to Gerry at CSC and he provided the following guidance:
1) This is something that happens on a lot of motorcycles
2) Not something to be worried about unless the oil is more than a weep. If spurting or loosing enough to puddle and drip then the top end needs to be pulled and re-sealed
3) This happens with lots of off-road and high RPM riding due to increase in crank case pressures
4) This can be exacerbated by over filling the oil level as it increases the crank case pressure. He suggested filling to a bit below the mid-point of the sight glass
5) He said that even if I were to pull and reseal the top end that it will probably start doing it again so don't worry about it unless it gets bad

This is just an FYI as I've now heard of a few folks that this is occurring.

Joe

Joe, sounds like you have gotten advice from Gerry and are OK with the minor weeping.

That said, when I first got my RX3, I had a bit of oil weeping around the cyl head area on the riders right side. I went around, carefully and one by one unscrewed the smaller nuts around the head area, just getting enough space under the nuts to dab a bit of sealant under the nut with the tip of a knife, then retightened the nuts. Not sure exactly which nut(s) was the culprit, but ended up curing the weeping. I don't know exact torque and did not want to break any seal in the head area. But I figured if I just did one nut at a time, and avoided the main head bolts, things couldn't go too far wrong. All's still well after 8700 miles.

Joe, are you talking about the 2 covers you remove when adjusting the valves? because these shouldn't need RTV as they have a O Ring gasket I believe, rj

Ok, so to be clear, its ok for your bike to leak oil........yeah...

Many others including me had the same thing happen. Application of sealant at the factory seems to be poor... I temporarily fixed the issue applying a small cord of sealant along the seam line. I also removed the top engine mounting bracket, as per recommendation from the Colombian distributor of the Rx3 (AKT). This worked fine for over 5000km with no new leaks.
Later I dropped the engine, remove the rocker cover, cleaned all the old RTV an applied it again; taking extra care in using just the right ammount and not leaving areas under covered, but I also didn't want pieces of excess sealant getting loose and cloging some oil passage. This was over 10000km ago and it has worked fine since then. My Rx3 is approaching 30000 km total.

Thanks for all the comments. RJ, no, this is the rocker cover and not the valve covers. If it gets worse I'll take care of it but as it is, it's fine.

the oil is following the threads on the bolts, right past the gasket, since they pass through the gasket, if you know which bolt, a little permatex high temp thread sealant on the bolt threads can stop this, it could be a harley, and you have to follow it around with cardboard under the engine, lol, this issue with oil seeping at bolts is much more common now that synthetic oils are so popular, the tiny amount of oil lost is far outweighed by the benefits of these new oils though