Does My Honda TRX450 ATV Have a Bad Oil Ring?

If your Honda ATV is blowing out excessive oil through the breather tube while you’re riding it, does that mean you’re dealing with a defective oil ring? It might be time to change out the piston and the rings.

Partzilla’s Honda ATV expert John Talley hosts lives Q&A sessions on our YouTube channel every Friday at 3pm Eastern. In this session, John was asked if the cause of a Honda TRX450 spitting out a lot of oil means an oil ring has gone bad.

Honda ATV bad oil ring

Honda ATV Bad Oil Ring Q&A

I have a 2007 Honda TRX450ER that’s blowing oil out of the breather tube excessively while riding. Is this a bad oil ring?

John Talley: What you’re getting is too much blow-by on the piston rings. It’s over-pressurizing the crankcase, and that air has to go somewhere. Sometimes it has oil with it, because we’re driving machines that bounce around a lot and it’s spitting it into your airbox or air cleaner. So it may be time to do the rings on that one, if not piston and rings. Because on the 450R, I mean that cylinder is pretty tough, and usually you can run 2-3 piston and ring changes before you have to replace the cylinder itself. But yup, I think it’s time to go into your top end.