Head Gasket or Water Pump or......

Hi all,

I went to the peak district for some green laning on Sunday (awesome by the way, and well worth a few hours drive for anyone that's nearby), and after about 4 hours of riding the bike cut out. I left it for 15 minutes and it started up ok, so carried on, half an hour later same thing happened, after 5 minutes of kicking it started again. This carried on until I eventually got bored of holding my mates up, and decided to nurse it back to the car and trailer (on road).

This evening I drained the oil and found it looking very milky - a sure sign of water obviously (and the half a litre missing from the radiator confirmed it). :cry:

I don't have too much engine knowledge, but know this is generally a sign of a head gasket failure, but trawling through the wiki and other threads, think it may be the water pump/gasket instead.

Anyone got any ideas how I can check this?
Is my continued starting and riding likely to have caused further damage?

Any help gratefully received,

Martin

Hi Bushie,

It's a 2004 FE550E, done about 200 hours and 7000 miles.
There's no leaking externally - I assume I'd see that if it was coming from the weep hole?

Thanks,

Martin

Hi Bushie,

Some further investigation has shown that the weep hole was blocked with a screw (why would you do that?), and the oil pump seal was buggered. This seems to explain the water in the oil then, so fortunately it's not the head gasket!

I just hope no damage was caused whilst riding the bike until it overheated and cut out.....

Thanks for the advice,

Martin