Oil in the YICS gallery?

OK, was tinkering around with the bike since the bike is fouling up the spark plugon cylinder 4 and back firing on I suspect the same cylinder (or cylinder 3 but unlikely). Anyways, I opened up the YICS gallery by removing the 12mm bolts from both sides of the bike and found just a small amount of oil in the YICS chamber.

Is this to be expected?

I'm not burning any oil, no blue smoke at all.

Also what is wierd is that my power went down considerably after opening up the gallery and putting the bolts back in. I did us some air from my compressor to blow out the chamber as I was interested in how much oil was in there. Now the bike just struggles to maintain 60MPH at full throttle. Any ideas?

I'm fearing the worst... a complete carb rebuild.

 

I think the worst would be a engine teardown and replacement of all the piston rings and such. Carb rebuild is cake. As long as your orginized. If you havent at least inspected and cleaned your carbs and made sure all the jets and needles are correct, now would be an amzing time

 

As for the oil in the YICS gallery, is that expected? I'm worried that I got a head gasket leak, even though there is no blue smoke.

And if it comes down to a complete rebuild of the engine then that's way beyond my skill and tool set.

I've been planning on rebuilding the carbs, and yes this would be my first time rebuilding any carb other than a lawnmower carb.

I've got a sonic bath at work I can use and was thinking of just tearing each carb apart one by one and taking it into work to put all the metal pieces into the wash.

 

I had just a liiiitle bit of oil on my YICS. I mean, if it returns in larger amounts in.. a week or so, then i'd be concerned.
But it sounds like your carbs needs attention anyway. These bikes have the pickiest carbs i've ever seen, and if order to get it right you must:
Check Valve Clearances
Thoroughly Clean Carbs. Dissembly and assembly is rather easy. BE ORGINZIED
http://xjmadness.myphotoalbum.com/slide ... me=album01
Sync Carbs
Colortune Carbs.
Its pretty easy. Just time consuming.
XJ Models: Patience required*
-Chris

 

Sounds like you did more than inspect the YICS passage.
Can you return anything else you may have done back to your starting point? Did you make it leaner?
Post your compression #'s and tell us what your plugs look like, along with the valve adjustment.

 

No, that's the wierd thing. I just opened both sides of the YICS gallery and blew out the oil with an air compressor. There wasn't a lot of oil but I was still concerned about it being there. Absolutely no adjustments.

Now I do know that cylinders 1 thru 3 are running lean because of the blue tint on my exhaust pipes. Cylinder 4 is rich because the plug is carbon fouled. This has been a pre-existing problem.

I had checked the compression a few months ago and while I can't remember the exact number I do remember it was well over 100psi here at sea level (Florida). I want to say it was 120 or 130 psi. I'll have to get a compression guage from a friend to double check.

Spark plug 1 and 2 are chocolate brown, spark 3 has its ceramic with a little red on it, and spark 4 is just plain black.

As for the valve adjustment... I hate to sound ignorant, but how do I check that?

 

Valve clearance check/adjust: http://xjbikes.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=14827.html

It sounds like you might have accidentally blown either oil or crud back into the carbs or possibly caused a bit of FOD to get stuck in a YICS passage (between the chamber and the valve.) I vote carbs.