[Seipgam]

So about a month ago I parked my newly acquired '95 Bullet 500 to do some work, drained excess oil from crank case, topped up the oil to about mid way between the upper and lower dip stick marks and left it at TDC.
Done a few jobs including replacing head gasket, all good there (apart from a slightly porous head - which I have already asked about on another thread), but when I started it up it smoked like a bastard, ran for about 20 minutes and seemed to be getting worse the longer it ran.
So I checked the crank case for oil, only got about 2 t-spoons out which I think is about right, but found the oil level now below the dip stick so I presume it burnt this off.
Topped up oil again and re started and all seems normal.  Took it for it's first test run of about 20 km and all still seems as it should be, with little to no smoking and the oil level still ok.

So what am I missing, if it had wet sumpped it should have been smoking less as time went on right?
Why was it ok the second time I started it?

What about the quill seal - anything to do with it?

Any thoughts?

Regards, Geoff.

[Chasfield]

One interpretation:

The motor had wet-sumped on standing, so lots of smoke as the oil control piston ring was swamped by excess crankase oil.
After a little while, most of this oil was scavenged up to the cylinder head, leaving the 2 teaspoons downstairs.
By this time the top end would be grossly over oiled, leading to bad smoking due to ingress of oil into the combustion chamber through the valve guides.
When you switched off, much oil had been burned and the rest of the top end excess drained down the pushrod tunnel in the normal way.
Subsequently the engine ran and oiled itself normally.

Regarding the quill seal: I am not sure if this contributes to wet sumping. I am thinking that it is more of a silent killer. If it fails, everything (mains, big end and, subsequently, the top-end) gets under oiled and the oil leaking past it just falls back into the timing chest, short circuiting its way back to the oil tank.

[Adrian II]

A factory 500 engine would have an oil seal (30mm O/D, 20mm I/D. 7mm thick) behind the timing pinion on the crankshaft as well as the quill seal. If yours was a converted 350 it's possible that this seal wasn't fitted.

A.