I went on a 1 hour ride yesterday and on my way home my engine starts kind of popping/knocking so I pull into the gas station asap and then it stalls. I let it cool down a bit then tried to start it and it would turn over with no knocking sounds but wouldn't fire up. This morning I started tearing it down but everything looks kind of fine my bike would burn oil on start up too. Any suggestions on what it could be? I'd get a new engine but most places want 700 for one shipped so I'm going to just throw away about 100 bucks and put a new head gasket, cyl gasket, piston rings and valve stem seals and hopefully it starts right up here are some pichurs. Any of you know where I can find those parts for cheap? if I can't find them I'm just going to go OEM via bikebandit. Oh, and it's an 05 with about 37,000 miles

not sure where to get them, but it looks like you have some nasty carbon deposits on the pistons... I am afraid of what I might find if I pulled mine apart..

yeah I'm going to remove those pistons and clean them up real good, if I fail to fix it I'm probably just going to part the bike out or sell it for a 900 or so 

Wow, you completely bypassed the testing phase and went directly to destroy phase 

I would have done a compression check first-off. Then check fuel supply, electrical / coils etc. before I did a complete tear down.

Well, you have it apart now. Do the top end rebuild and get it put back together so you can figure out what exactly happened.

Quote from: harhar on February 08, 2011, 03:05:07 PM
yeah I'm going to remove those pistons and clean them up real good, if I fail to fix it I'm probably just going to part the bike out or sell it for a 900 or so 

If you end up selling make sure to post it here..............I have a motor that needs a good bike.

I've never torn down a GS engine...do these pictures indicate normal wear for an engine with 37,000 miles?

Quote from: XealotX on February 08, 2011, 06:29:37 PM
I've never torn down a GS engine...do these pictures indicate normal wear for an engine with 37,000 miles?

Doesn't look too far off the couple of GS motors I've torn into

That RH exhaust valve and its seat looks a bit suspect 

I just ordered the parts 140 shipped  I'm going to clean the pistons, head and valves later in the evening and hopefully that white valve isn't damaged. I went ahead and started tearing it apart because I just pretty much needed an excuse to do it, it burned a lot of oil on start up which meant it needed new valve stem seals or worse piston rings. I know it wasn't fuel starvation or maybe even bad fuel so that checks out. I was going to test the compression before anything else, but my gauge didn't fit the spark plug hole

Question, can I access the rod bearings from the bottom by just removing the oil pan or is there some kind of transmission gears in the way? might as well replace them or at least inspect them, but they seem pretty fine. I moved to rod around to see if there was any play and there isn't

take the head to machine shop and have it inspected....and let them install the vlv stem seals.  they might do a vlv job....it might be ok.  you can do a leakage check with gas first

That valve being ashy white is an indication of lean.
This motor looks near perfect.
The probem may have been your carbs - or carb boots to be exact. Intake air leak would do exactly that. So can an exhaust leak and so can a carb comming loose form the manifold - like mine did a few years ago.
Tell me - you have K&N pods in the bike ?
Cool.
Buddha.

hmm interesting, I'm gonna check out the carbs. I have the stock airbox and air filter

dropped off the head for a nice clean and valve stem seal replacement since I don't wanna deal with the valve springs because I don't have a compressor. I also cleaned up the pistons a bit, just need to hit the sides with sand paper to get all that crap out

got a call from the machine shop, turns out that whiteish exhaust valve has two smallish cracks. Guy said he can work with the others but I'll need a new exhaust valve 

Does it mean that if valve are white, its probably cracked or damaged in other ways? 
Mine valves is white like a snow 

Have you looked into making a baking soda blaster? All you need is an air compressor and a siphon gun. Baking soda removes everything EXCEPT metal, and dissolves immediately with warm water.