To recap:  my bike was knocked over while parked by some car-driving dork in the middle of the night.  Along with a broken clutch lever, turn signal, and sidestand, the bike has lost all oil pressure.  Previous thread:

http://gstwins.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=132843

Oh, and thanks for all the great suggestions so far!

Anyway, I finally got it into my shop today and took it apart.  I removed the oil pan and both side covers, as well as the filter and the pickup screen.  Here's what I found:

There were some chunks of metal in the oil pan.  They look like a cast and subsequently machined part, maybe gear teeth or something, though they didn't look pointy enough to be gear teeth.  They're made of steel.  Here's a picture of the largest one:



There's more pictures at: http://www.sonic.net/~ian/gs500-chunks/

The largest piece is a little more than 1cm across.  Sorry about the poor quality of the photos...  I took most of them with a halogen shop light.

I checked out the alternator.  It's in great shape.  One little piece of lacquer has chipped off one of the magnets, but otherwise it's in perfect condition, so it's not goats (and I was so hoping it would be, since that doesn't seem too hard to fix ).

I had previously pulled the oil pressure sender and started the engine to see if any oil would come out.  It didn't.  The oil passage to the pressure sender was clear, as were all the other oil passages I could find to stick my fingers in.  The oil filter seemed reasonably clean, certainly not clogged with anything.

I'm pretty stumped at this point...  I'm thinking of pulling the oil pump and having a look at it, but I'm not sure how to do that just yet...  I think the Clymer mentions it, though.

Pieces of metal like that in the sump indicate a major engine fault, something has definately broken internaly when the bike went over. I dont think its possible to even speculate the exact cause and nature of the damage just by looking at the pics although pic #6 sure looks like a piece of magnet from the flywheel. have a look in the Haynes manual, page 8.23 pic no 33.10a. Here is my opinion. If you have the sides off and cant see any obvious damage I would guess when the bike went over it landed on the gearshift shaft. This has then been forced into the gearbox and has caused damage to the selecter machanism and forks and to the internal webbings of the casings. If the casing  has cracked or broken into a oil gallery or if one of the shell bearings has become displaced from its journal owing to damage that would explain the loss of oil pressure. Its a big guess but the only way to be sure is to split the engine

many of those things REALLY look like the magnet and lacqeur.....


are they magnetic?

Ok, cant tell about others, but chunks 2 and 7 look like thrust bearing chunks. these sit in the cases just on the inside of the crank jurnals, and keep the crank from walking back and forth inside the cases. they are generaly half moon in shape and have grooves for oil to lube.

The pieces are definitely made of steel, and are not magnetic by themselves.  There is one piece of lacquer from the alternator rotor, but I looked at the rotor where it came off, and the rest of it is in good condition.

I could see them being bearing chunks.  That'd suck.

For what it's worth, the shift lever isn't bent, and the shaft appears to not have any excessive wobble.  I don't know if either of those things are indicative of the condition of the transmission, though.

There is a gear that wobbles a bit, on the right side.  It appears to engage the transmission input shaft, but the place that it does is underneath the clutch so I can't see it.  The crankshaft and the trans. input shaft don't seem to have any play in them.  I'd measure the crank endplay if I knew how on this engine, but I don't...

Teardown time.

Good lord...!!! Whats in your engine man..!!!

Looks like it's time for....