Many of you may remember my recent lock-up and scary moment.

Now I have inlisted the help of a rather mechanically minded friend. The engine is out, the carbs have been stripped and cleaned and inspected and given a clean bill of health. They have been put back together with nes gaskets and O-ring.

In my office are Cylinder head gasket, Base gasket, piston rings, cam box gasket, oil, oil filter, and valve grinding paste.

The engine is in bits, and the pistons are just poking out of the bottom section. The Liners have been de-honed, or honed (cant remember which he said), whilst I was given the task of cleaning all the bits of gasket off the surfaces with a plastic scraper. I did at one point suggest that this task would be easier with a metal scraper, he just looked at me as if I had said that the pope should be jewish, so I just got me head down and carried on with the plastic scraper.

He reckons the engine will be done tonight and put back in tomorrow night, back on the road for wed.

He also said I need new bearings in the back wheel, said to change them when I next do chain and sprockets.

sounds good. good luck

Nice delivery man just dropped off my new cam chain, Now I have all the bits I need.

Only thing troubling me, is I still dont know exactly what caused it to lock up in the first place. But my man stevie is confident it will be a good un when hes finished. I will be oweing him a few beers at the end of it.

be glad that you have "your man" to help you with the job 
If you had to go to the shop you'd owe them couple hundred $$ instead of couple beers 

cheers
KaMeL

I'm glad hes helping as well, I can cope with oil changes, spark plugs and the like, but I'm not cofident going this far into the engine without his guidance.

Update, we started on it a 4pm, its now 11:20 pm and we have the engine back together. It turns over smoothly by hand and feels like the compression is good with the plugs in. He reckons it is a goer. I was mainly fetching, cleaning, oiling things, greasing things and doing up the nuts he told me to do until the tourqe wrench buzzed. But I think I have learnt a lot from the experience.

Also he has welded and painted my split downpipe where you may recall I had done my botch job repair, looks real neat and tidy now.

Tomorrow, we put the engine back in. He wanted to paint it first, but I dont see the point, its not a pretty bike, its well used and showing a fair few battle scars.  He say's I will need to go easy on it for the first few hundred miles, but other than that, thinks it will be good for many miles to come.


I will try to post another update tomorrow night.

You locked up you head knocking/tapping/clicking/banginig noises before it did that you look at crank and rods ... fully ... any signs of distress or over heating ?
Cool.
Buddha.

Quote from: The Buddha on September 08, 2008, 07:06:38 PM
You locked up you head knocking/tapping/clicking/banginig noises before it did that you look at crank and rods ... fully ... any signs of distress or over heating ?
Cool.
Buddha.

I did not personally inspect, but stevie looked at everytrhing before he told me what bits to order. He said all the expensive bits were OK.  There were no unusaul noises before it locked up, and it ran fine after I restarted it. His current theory is that the rings got so bad it filled one cylinder with oil. He reckons I am lucky not to have bent a "con-rod" (I think he said con rod, but I may be making that up). It did used to rattle a lot, but he put some shims in the cams, or under the cams or something to do with the cams and reckons that will solve the rattles. I trust his judgement.

Filled with oil ... and bad rings ... while running and it seized ... OK sorry that combination is a little far fetched.

Bad rings = it will let oil in the chamber and let it burn, but it will not fill and seize. So was it smoking or burning oil ... rememeber it can burn oil for a long time before it gets too bad to run. It stops running due to lack of compression.
Rings too tight will cause excessive heat and seize the pistons to the wall, but will not fill the chamber with oil. The chamber if anything will be too dry.

You could have just run out of oil and seized up stuff. In which case just doing a top end on it and slapping it back is extremely risky.
Cool.
Buddha.

Quote from: The Buddha on September 09, 2008, 10:47:42 AM
Filled with oil ... and bad rings ... while running and it seized ... OK sorry that combination is a little far fetched.

Bad rings = it will let oil in the chamber and let it burn, but it will not fill and seize. So was it smoking or burning oil ... rememeber it can burn oil for a long time before it gets too bad to run. It stops running due to lack of compression.

It had been smoking for a while before it went a bit mental on me, I got an advisory for it at the last MOT, but it passed as the bike is too old to fail on emmissions. I was putting about 3/4 pint oil in it every week. There were no oil leaks so I figured it must be burning it. Probably smoking for the last 10k miles. He says that was down to the rings. we compared a new and old ring, the old one was about 2mm wide, the new one was a lot wider. The bottom rings were cracked, he showed me this and said I was real lucky it had not scrapped the liners? (I think).

Anyhow, the engine was put back in the frame last night, we did not start it as it was late and our neighbours have kiddies that would have been in bed. (probably also the parents, it was allmost midnight). We turned it over a few times on the starter motor on the bench while he checked a few things before it went back in the bike. We used an old car battery and jump leads direct on to the starter motor and spunit 4 or 5 times for about 20 seconds a go. Not sure exactly what he was checking, but he said it all seems ok.

Its all back together now appart from the psark plugs as he wants to check the compression before I put them in. He reckons on about an hours more work to do some stuff with the carbs and tweak a few things to get it just right. Should be on the road again tomorrow, cant wait, using the 1200 for work is costing me a fortune in petrol.

You were burning oil, but didn't run it out and seize. OK and your rings came out and stuck in the thing gettng it to lock up ? If so, it cant be filled with oil.
I dunno man, I wish you the best of luck, some of the stuff you're saying doesn't sound plausible. Maybe he's saying stuff you're forgetting.
Cool.
Buddha.

Buddha, He said lots of stuff and I dont claim to understand it all. I could well be relaying the information completely wrong and leading you up the wrong tree. Though I feel it has given me a good basic knowledge of how things work. He was trying to explain it all as he went, but I'm still no expert.

Anyhow, Fired it up last night and it ran like a sick dog. he warmed it up for about 10 minutes and started fiddling with the carbs, he balanced the vacuums with some dials, turned some other screws, fiddled with some stuff and left it sounding better than it ever has.

Rode it to work this morning, and its like a different bike. No smoke, started in an instant first thing and ran sweet all the way in. The rattles are gone as well.

Gonna cost me a fortune in the pub tomorrow afternoon, but worth it.

sounds liek your m8 did well, and hopefully the lockup didnt damage any vital parts, or heat stress em either. but wishing you the best 

Remember 500 mile break in if you did just top end, and 1000 mile if you did bottom end too. And yea  to both of you.
Cool.
Buddha.

He did tell me I would have to take it easy for a few humdred miles. No hard acceleration, no screaming it and no holding the revs high for a while. I guess this would be the "break in" that you mention.

Also he said I ABSOLUTELY MUST change the oil and filter after 1000 miles.

250 miles so far and still running like a dream. and it sounds so much better now he has welded up the downpipe for me. Will probably be getting him nicely drunk this afternoon as my way of thanks to him. Still much cheaper than a new bike though.