Sorry for the harsh tone ... but as mentioned above ... if the chain breaks it could be disastrous. I'm a chain nut because I learned the hard lessons you're learning now a few decades back. I've seen chains break (rare these days), ruin the engine case, lock the wheel and send bike and rider into a ditch. Not a happy outcome. A broken chain at speed should be avoided.

This is perhaps one of the most common things those "new to bikes" miss. They ignore their drive chain.

The "main bearing" comment maybe should have read "Main Counter Shaft bearing". the Counter shaft is the shaft the front sprocket goes onto. There is a bearing that fits into the engine case and seals that shaft. These sometimes fail or leak ... easily fixed if you can find the right bearing. (common size)

Looks like you've got lots of local help here ... gotta love the HU community!

Glad to read you're doing bike research and learning your bike. Big ups!
It ain't rocket science ... just basic maintenance. Step by Step.

The oil use is a bit worrying but as long as you keep the level up, you will be fine until you have time to sort it out and find the problem.
It could be a few things:
1. be consistent with the way you check the level. NOTE: Level will always be different when bike is cold as opposed to HOT. Is bike always level? Are you supposed to screw in dip stick all the way in? .. or not? (varies bike to bike)

2. Sometimes switching to a much lighter synthetic oil can cause some oil use. Use correct weight oil when possible. (10/40 ?)

3. Don't worry about mixing & matching oil. Regular non synthetic is fine to mix with semi or Full synthetic oil. Mixing brands is fine too. JUST KEEP the level up ... but never OVER FILL

4. If the valves are well out of spec, this can sometimes cause more oil use.
5. If the crankcase vent hose is pinched, kinked or blocked, this can cause oil use or pumping of oil into Air Box.
6. Check your Air Box and Air Filter ... is there oil in the Air Box? Is the Air Filter soaked with oil? If so, then you may have OVER filled the crankcase with oil ... or rings are bad. Over filling is not good. Make sure you check the oil level using Honda's recommended method.

Good luck sorting all this out!

The way to measure oil on an AT is cold (in the morning before setting off...) with the bike on horizontal ground and vertical (on centre stand?). The dipstick should be placed in the hole, not screwed in to measure.

ATs (and Transalps) all start to use oil after a while. Apparently it is caused by hardened valve guide stems. I have 3 Honda twins (one AT with 50k miles/80k km and 2 TAs, both with unknown mileage, but probably each over 80k miles) and they all use oil. If I ride very conservatively and not faster than 90kmh, there's virtually no loss and at a more aggressive riding style and speeds up to 140kmh about a litre for 1000km. So... check your oil in the morning and make sure it's full. For max to min on the dipstick is 0.5 litres. (max is 2.6, min is 2.1) and fill up at lunchtime if you need to. And ride conservatively, which you'll being doing because there's so much to see, Indian/Nepali roads don't allow speed..... and you're nursing a shagged chain.

Standard sprockets combo is 16 tooth front and 45 tooth rear. Like I said previously, try to get a Honda original front sprocket. Also buy a few spare front sprocket retainers.

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TBS.com

Drive shaft bearing = the bearing behind the sprocket. If this bearing goes, the shaft goes off-center and oil seeps by the oilseal, resulting in a rapid oil loss from the engine, a very oily chain and rapid sprocket/chain wear. Unfortunately, if this bearing is shot, you'll need a complete breakdown of the engine to replace it, and depending on how long it's been shot (distance you did with it), there could be significant wear inside the engine and oil pump due to small metal parts distributed throughout the engine and gearbox.

That's the bad news.

Oil use: I found on my bikes and the AT, the 'older' the oil gets, the more oil the bike uses. I.e. the bike will not use any oil for thousands of kms, but then all of a sudden, the oil 'disappears' and I constantly have to fill up. I've done some reading, and if I understand it correctly, when the oil wear's off, the polymers that make it 'clingy' wears off and more oil stays behind in the cylinders and burns up through the exhaust. A good quality oil lasts longer than cheap oil, but according to Honda, any oil consumption upto a liter / 1000km is normal.

So just cause it uses oil, doesn't mean there's something wrong, but it's worth keeping an eye one and isolating 'when' it uses oil- e.g. if you do an oil-change, is it 'better' all of a sudden?

As for previous comment on valve guides- relatively easy to check: if you stop for a few minutes, e.g. at a traffic light, then pull off- is there a small puff of black smoke that disappears? if so- that's a leaking valve train.

Running against back-compression (e.g. down a hill, closed throttle with the engine doing the breaking) with a smoke cloud behind you = rings. If this is the issues, you should also see a lot of oil in the airbox or dripping out of the crank case breather as you'll have too much crankcase pressure.

These checks above can be done without any instruments/tools just by being observant when you're riding.

Last but not least- spark plug foul: if there's too much oil in the cylinders (for whatever reason), you'll start to foul the plugs with unburnt residue. In fact spark plugs can tell you a lot of what's happening in the engine
Spark Plug Troubleshooting - YouTube



Good luck!!!

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Squily