Camshaft cover leaking

So recently I've found some oil underneath my bike, and after i start the bike up and the exhaust pipe start to get hot it smoke! The oil that dripped on the exhaust pipe is burning off. If my judgement is correct the oil is coming out of the camshaft cover. Any advice on what the problem may actually be and how to fix it? Thanks a lot.

Could be the a leaking of the worm gear seal of the tach drive.

Here is a pic of an KZ750 twin worm gear drive.

Sorry for the late reply, so I pulled the tach cable and it is indeed a leaking seal, i bought new seals and rings and all, but now there is a new problem, the whole tach gear is stuck and i cant get it out, is there any way to get it out easily? Thanks

Did you try removing the valve cover and pushing out the gear from the inside out? Removing the cover will give you an opportunity to check/adjust the valves too.

The tach gear meshes with a gear on the exhaust cam. If the two gears are engaged you may not be able to remove the tach gear without rotating the cam. If you have a kick starter you can rotate the cams by turning the kicker. If you don't have a kick starter you can remove the timing cover and rotate the engine with the bolt you will see when you remove the cover.

The gear will come out without rotating the engine.

On my KZ1000, the drive was stuck as though welded to the head, and this was 30yrs ago. I could imagine and expect more stuck after years pass. I never got mine off, but had a missing flat paper gasket between the cable and drive that no one seems to even care of, but by replacing the paper gasket I had no more leak, so never removed the stuck on drive.

If that tach gear housing , or guide as Kawasaki calls it, has a hex head on it you may be able to get a socket or wrench on it and gently turn it from side to side to try and free it up. It may just be stuck in the hole from a build up of old oil that has caked up over time. You may want to give it a shot of some penetrating oil such as Kroil to help the process. I don't know how much room you have to work with though.

Rick H.

RonKZ650 wrote: On my KZ1000, the drive was stuck as though welded to the head, and this was 30yrs ago. I could imagine and expect more stuck after years pass. I never got mine off, but had a missing flat paper gasket between the cable and drive that no one seems to even care of, but by replacing the paper gasket I had no more leak, so never removed the stuck on drive.

Plus 1 on the paper gasket, i have had a slight leak on all of my big Zeds at this point and made the gaskets on each one, leak cured every time.