Not sure if the link works or not, I'm hoping it will. The red box is the bolt that has been stripped to all hell. The green circle is where the oil is slowly leaking from. It's not major, but I've noticed it a couple times now. I always check the oil level and I haven't had to add any oil yet, but I want to take care of this before it gets worse. It looks to me like its just not sealed properly, but that doesnt explain the bolt that has been stripped. Im guessing too much vibration or something not balanced. Any thoughts?

Yea i thought about that, but it won't fix the problem. Something is vibrating a lot which is causing it to mess up the threads on the bolt. Literally, the metal was embedded into the threads on the bolt. I peeled them off of the threads and it looked like a spring. I've only got 49 hours on the motor and its less than a year old, so I don't want this to be a yearly "maintenance" item.

Steel bolt, aluminum head. It happens.

Have you never taken the valve cover off? It's very easy to over torque the valve cover bolts. Also easy to cross thread them.

I haven't taken it off, but I have tightened them before. So it is possible that I over tightened them and stripped it. The main reason I tighten everything after every trip is because I lost a couple bolts the first few times I took it out (on the muffler itself and where the muffler is connected to the motor). So i'm kinda paranoid about it. I loctited most of the ones on the muffler and haven't had a problem since then, though. Hopefully that's all the problem is.

Excessive vibration is usually caused by a drivetrain issue. More than likely the prop being out of balance.

If the hole is stripped out, you need to helicoil it. My guess is that will fix the problem for good, just be careful how much you torque those bolts from now on. They just need to be snug. As noted, they are VERY easy to strip out. If the helicoil is installed properly, you should never have another issue with that bolt/hole again. The helicoil itself will be a larger thread and will bite into the aluminum much better than the fine thread factory bolt, and then you'll have a much harder material for your bolt to bite into.

Thanks, I appreciate the help. I'll definitely check the prop, too.

There is some videos online on how to static balance a prop. Not the most accurate way to do it, but you can rig something up pretty easily to give you an idea if it's way out of whack or not. Unless you have a prop guy that can check it or balance it for you on the cheap...

Without actually running the motor personally, I don't think I'd be overly concerned with it. All of these motors vibrate a lot. It's the nature of the beast.

Yea I've heard people say they vibrate a lot, so that was expected. I had a godevil longtail before this and it was obviously a big change. Personally, I don't think it vibrates that much, but that might be because I'm so used to the motor now.

X2 on the helicoils. They are the shit. When my pops was doing the kart racing thing back in the day, the first thing he would do to an aluminum block was helicoil every single hole in it. He never had trouble with 'em, either.

I had all 4 bolts in/on the muffler loosen up as well on my 25. I tightened everything up like you did because of it and ended up breaking the heads off a couple bolts.

Nothing was loose other than the muffler bolts so I did more harm than good.