Oil Leak... Head Gasket seems to have blown

[Si Speed 317]

So, after about 15 minutes of my 25 minute ride with my father and his friend (father has an R1, his friend has a Harley), I look down on my 02' 600 Katana and see my left shoe has some oil on it...... so i look at the left side of my bike... I see oil down the side of it. Not much, but enough to notice and enough to spray onto my shoe. It was only on the left side fairing, from the bottom opening in it. Get home, take off the side fairing, we see where the gasket is and it seems that the oil came from there. Above it was clean, so our analysis is head gasket. I'm new to bikes but somewhat familiar with motors, so I figured some of you could chime in. Pictures are worth a thousand words, so here you go. I downsized them, but left them at 800x600 so you could still see detail.

Also, I forgot to mention that the crank case cover damage in the first picture was done by the previous owner, not me.










Please help, thanks.

[steves]

The first thing I would try is re torquing the head bolts. You can find a manual in the wiki.

[arsenic]

I would certainly say your head gasket assumption is on the right track.

[Si Speed 317]

Thank you Steve and Chris so far, Chris you think it's definitely blown? or is it possible I can retorque the bolts and it would be fine?

[steves]

Is it running crappy, or just weeping oil? If it's just weeping, then the gasket probably isn't "blown"

[Si Speed 317]

It's running fine thus far, just a little oil

[jbo197]

Retorque