New To Bonnie's- Help Please.

Hi and welcome to the forum.

The filter appears to be a crankcase breather, not a standard part, normally the crankcase breathes back through the airbox.

From the pictures your bike appears to be one of the last carburettored Bonnevilles I have a 2006 model, I find that the way to start mine from cold is to pull the choke all the way out, hit the starter but do not open or even blip the throttle until the engine has started and picked up to a steady idle.

I do not normally have a problem starting when warm. Clearly it's a phone call back to the selling dealer asking him to sort out the issues you have

 

Hi jkT100Bon, and welcome.
Your Bonnie is I think the very first of the EFI 865's. I have an 09 SE EFI. Do you have the standard exhaust or after market? If it's a more open pipe this can cause a little popping on the over run if the ECU has not been re-mapped.
The choke knob is in fact a fast idle on the EFI bikes and is just a starting aid. On mine I pull the choke knob fully out to start be it hot or cold and use no throttle at all, then push it fully in after a few seconds.
A hot start with no choke and a little throttle some times doesn't start the bike up first time but I have had some tuning work done and very open pipes and this has changed the character of the engine somewhat.
The breather filter is non standard but i don't think this should have any bearing on starting running.
These bikes are usually very reliable so I'm sure you'll get it sussed and really enjoy it when it warms up a bit.

Any way, as your new to the forum enjoy this free....

 

The crankcase breather pipe would originally have been connected to the air box, any water or oil vapour would have then passed through the air box and then through the carbs before being burnt off in the combustion chambers, the water vapour comes mainly from atmospheric moisture and condensation that forms inside the engine cases whenever the engine cools, someone has removed the breather pipe to the air box and fitted a filter to the end of the pipe, so now the water and oil vapour collects on the filter and forms an emulsion, that is what you can see dripping out of the filter, it’s not a problem other than it causes a mess, people do this mod thinking that it will give the engine more performance, technically it does but it’s so little as to be virtually undetectable, so it’s a waste of time, if I were you I’d restore the original system and therefore not have messy emulsified oil dripping onto the engine.
Regarding the poor running it’s possible that your carbs iced up, the ambient temperature is very low at the moment and there’s a lot of moisture in the air, perfect conditions for carb icing, my Ducati M900 is prone to this, sudden throttle openings cause a pressure drop in the carbs, this leads to ice forming instantly, dropping back to tick over and allowing the bike to idle for a minute allows the ice to clear, after which slower and gentle opening of the throttle goes a long way to avoiding carb icing.
Some set ups are prone to carb icing some aren’t, my M900 does it easily, my 900ss doesn’t, same engines, same carbs, go figure!.

 

Regarding the oily discharge... What Mark9 said.
As for the poor running, it's unlikely the carbs would ice up on a fuel injected bike. There is a guy who advertises on here with a company called TTP, triumph twin power, he can do remapping of the ECU so it runs better with open pipes, thoug it wont do any harm to not have a re-tune.
Nice looking bike, it looks like the previous owner has done some other tasty mods, like neat headlamp brackets and indicators, also ignition relocation. You're going to enjoy it I'm sure.
Could you post some more pics on the "Post your Bonneville pics here" thread?

 

Nice colours - like my old 2004 T100.
Looks like it has after market indicators, headlamp bracket, and instrument binnacles fitted. The ignition switch has also been relocated from its original position on the left side of the old headlamp bracket.

 

I'm no expert on the air cooled bikes, but won't their be air leaking into the manifold here?

 

looks like CV carbs in the photo to me!

 

Tons of upgrades on that Bonnie: led indicators front and back, headlight brackets, chromed engine cover, Hagon rear shocks, aftermarket pipes, locking fuel cap, heated grips, instrument cases... She looks gorgeous, previous owner obviously loved her.

The breather upgrade is mostly for looks. You should be able to just reconnect the tubing to the original hole in the air box, if you want to undo it. However, it could very well be that the filter is just soggy and needs a good cleaning, before being refitted.

As for the starting issues, maybe the aftermarket pipes are the culprit (and I can't tell exactly from your photos on the other thread, but looks like the secondary air injection has been removed as well). You may need a different fuel map, although I also removed the SAI and have aftermarket exhausts (TEC), and yet use the "standard" map (although I did remap to the latest slightly improved version). It can also just be that the bike hasn't run for a long time, and may need a bit of an overall (oil, spark plugs, throttle body sync, etc).

 

It looks from the invoice as if the previous owner had Triumph Twin Power remap the bike to allow for the TORS exhaust and the baffle removal from the airbox. (although it says "Installation - no thanks" According to this, the SAI wasn't removed.

 

Had a similar problem with warm starts on my Anniversary Edition (EFI) manual says to pull the fast idle knob out to the first notch for warm starts, no problems since.

 

Hi JkT100bon and welcome to the forum happy you are enjoying learning about your new ride and sorting through the issues.
You’ll get a proper welcome on newbies hangout