2009 Ninja 250 blown head gasket

So I went out to do a pre ride inspection on my wife's bike and i checked the oil only to see it white and milky... pretty sure it's a blown head gasket, i followed up in the service manual and it confirmed my suspicion. Now I have to decide if I want to just replace the head gasket, or do a whole engine rebuild. Idk what kind of damage has been done to the cylinder walls because of improper lubrication so i'm contemplating pulling the pistons, honing the cylinders, installing new rings, and pistons if necessary. Thoughts?

 

^ How long did the bike sit? The oil can look milky thru the window from moisture in the air if it sits too long. Does It fire up? is it a 2007/ older or is it a 2008-2012?

Run it till its hot, change oil, then see.

I lost count how many of these I have worked on, I raced 2 of them and I currently have a fleet of 12... I have never seen or heard of a blown head gasket. Im not saying impossible, just saying that would really suck.

They are good little motors, tough!

 

Hey thanks for the reply... The bike does sit for up to a week at a time sometimes. It's a 2008 and yes it runs, I turned it off as soon as I saw the white oil so it didn't warm up. I'll try changing the oil and seeing if it runs ok... Thanks again for the reply ill post with an update tomorrow!

 

If you are in warmer weather like 50+ degrees, that motor will run great on Rotela-T 15-40 (yes that is compliant with the manual)

and you can put a few oounces of seafoam in the crank case and run it till it gets hot to free up any crap in the crank case before you change the old oil.

also, drain the oil from both drain plugs.

If your new filter comes with 2 O-rings, the smaller one goes around the bolt that goes in the middle of the filter housing.

I have PDF service manual if you PM me your email.

 

Ok so I pulled the fairing off to check the coolant level and it's pretty low (below the L). Also as I looked at the oil with the engine off it looked ok so I thought maybe whatever was in it had separated so I started it up. It fires right up perfectly but now I can't even see the oil thru the port, so confused. Lol I'm just gonna do a oil change and cooling system flush and go from there. Thanks for the info man... I have a Clymer manual for the bike so I'm good there.

 

I dont mean to sound like I am insulting you, but was the bike perfectly upright when you checked the oil? It takes it a min to settle back down to the window after it was running. You also wont see much oil if you look while its running. Also while the bike is on the kickstand, you should not see any oil, or it is overfull. (I run into folks everyday that do all that)

The clear plastic with coolant in it is just the overflow, it will change as the bike gets hot / cold. If the overflow gets too full, then it will spit out the hose attached near the cap. that hose leads to the bottom behind the engine. If the bike has fallen over on that side, the overflow will spit out from that hose.

 

Lol yea the bike was upright... I'm changing out the fluids this morning I'll post an update later on

 

So, what was the outcome?

 

A bit late to the party but I'd say pull it to change out the head gasket and while you're in there take a look at the cylinders. If you see they're jacked up then I'd take it out and rebuild it.

 

Sorry for the super late reply, forgot to update this thread.
Well the outcome was a misdiagnosis. lol I have no idea WHY the oil looked the way it did when i started it up that morning. I turned it off as soon as I saw the oil and then left town for the weekend, when I got home and got around to checking out the bike, as I posted earlier it looked ok. But just to be safe I drained the oil from both ports, replaced the oil filter and cleaned the oil intake screen. Then flushed the cooling system and put in fresh coolant. It started up fine, so I took it for a spin and it rode just fine... and thats it, the oil looked fine. haha I guess it was just a freak thing.

 

It might be a slow leak on the water pump shaft seal getting ready to give way.

You can send a sample of the oil into Blackstone Labs for $25 and they run a spectral analysis and tell you mineral, additive, and other stats about the oil including if any coolant is found and if so how much in the sample you sent in. Doing analysis caught a water pump seal/shaft leak that I didn't even see in the oil before the seal blew and turned my oil into peanut butter.

http://www.blackstone-labs.com/

I've used them several times for my motorcycles and cars. They also give you suggestions about your oil change interval based on the condition of the oil sent in.

 

not freak at all. Most bikes do that. We are not accustomed to seeing the oil in our vehicles, but if you left any vehicle for a while without running in a place with humidity, it would look like what you saw.

the thing with bikes is lots of them have the oil viewing window so you can see the "cloud"