Hello all!

Recently (it's the winter here in blighty which means cold and wet) my bike has started smelling "funny" when I come to a stop after riding for anywhere from 10 minutes up. The smell is a "Strange Smell"... rubber/coolant/oil/acrid/sweet most noticeable when you come to a stop and turn her off. The smell seems to be coming from the front of the bike, maybe around the head/radiator/manifold area. To give you some background I recently changed the exhaust manifold (headers) for some nice stainless steel ones (but long enough ago that I think the protective coating will have boiled off). One thing I did do when doing this was temporarily hold the gaskets in with a bit of good old "instant gasket" so I am wondering if it could be this heating up and smelling. I don't appear to be loosing oil or coolant, nor do I appear to have any leaks. Having done some searching on here I guess it could be an electrical smell, but it doesn't really strike me as that... smells too sweet, almost like coolant but like I said, don't seem to have any leaks (are there any "usual suspect" areas to check?). The other thing I'm wondering is... is it just crap spitting up off the road onto the manifold/radiator and burning off producing the smell. The smell is worse on wet/damp days, but is there on dry days too....

so...

any ideas people?

Thanks in advance!

 

How many miles since you replaced the header gaskets? I would think after about 100miles or less, there should be no trace
of smell left. I would start looking for coolant leaks.

 

Probably about 300 miles +

Shall start looking today.

 

well had a good look around today and there appears to be no coolant leaks and no oil leaks (baring some small seapage from the rocker cover gasket that's not even enough to get near the manifold). The only thing I can think is it's the instant gasket i used to hold in the exhaust manifold gaskets.... smell is definitely sweet and strong, very coolant like... however coolant system appears solid and no loss.

any more thoughts?