I'm pleased to say my bike isn't leaking a single drop of oil anymore... Hubby went to work and it was beautiful out, so I was trying to put the exhaust manifold back on myself... (That we both sanded/ground the rust off of and I painted it!)..... Was having a hard time getting the manifold and flanges situated.. I finally got them eased in together, did the outer two first and worked my way in. They seemed pretty uniform, but still a gap remained. I took a pic:


I PMed Kuro and he said something about gaskets. I pull up the PDF manual and sure enough, it says to replace the exhaust gaskets in between there. SMH!! I asked my husband, and neither one of us remembers removing said gaskets when we took the manifold off. Could it be this is why I used to get horrible headaches every time I rode my bike. Yet another thing the original owner fubared!

Oh yeah, and Thanks Kuro!!

 

The gaskets are little round compression rings. if you didnt see them, they are probably in the head. Without them, you would hear a pretty good exhaust leak. I doubt that it would be the cause if headaches. There is too much open air around a motorcycle to be affected by CO.

 

I'm convinced it's coming from my bike and this is why:
I've been to indoor motorsport events that weren't ventilated very well and gotten horrible headaches.. I know what exhaust smells like (it saturates my clothes) and it's too frequent of an occurrence for it to not come from my bike.. This happens even if I take a scenic country ride and don't really see any other vehicles.

 

maybe then...
can you breathe in your helmet? do you ride visor up? (try it) CO robs oxygen. try to get more oxygen on your face.

can you hear an exhaust leak at the header? replace the gaskets just because they may be leaking. i hope you get to the bottom of this.