Quote from: Big Rich on April 29, 2012, 01:31:04 AM
Sorry Adidas, long night........but have you drained the oil yet? If there's a small magnet on the drain plug, check it for metal. Then I would go with Bomb: pull the pan and see what's hiding in there.

I'll drag a neodymium magnet through the oil and see if anything gets picked up.

I'm really thinking of keeping Junior out of service for as couple months to do a complete clean of every part, nut and bolt. Put him back together like new --- like Phenix. maybe even put on that OEM "E" model fairing that is in the box for a year.

my money is on something bent or broken in the shift assembly. Maybe a broken spring or dog that is colliding with parts in the tranny. Take that thing apart and find out!

scottychop came over. We started to fix up the spare 89 engine. Plan is to put that in then open up Juniors motor and see the damage. I'll add more pictures shortly. Tired after a day of wrenching.

  This is no good, just saw this!

Hope you get it all sorted out!

My guess: bent fork allowing one of the dogs to partially engage a gear.
Did it run ok in all gears? Did the noise go away when in one of them?

Have fun with the rebuild!

It did seem to go through all gears, though I rode slow back home and maybe never went into 6th.
The noise kept getting louder as I got home.
Everything in the engine part checks out just fine. I expected to see something inside the cylinders but the spy cam showed all was clean and dry. The spark plugs we identical. Looking in at the intake and exhaust valves they look good and the same on both sides. idled fine. No loss of power but seemed to be slipping a little. That is, the engine revved fine with good power but gears seems to slip a little. I do admit I did not force it - I rode home easy.

Noise in all gears and when idling.

I guess no way to look at the transmission without cracking open the engine? No small opening anywhere for a spy cam?

If I recall, you can see part of a gear or two through oil pan.......but I might be thinking of a different motor too.

If you can see the gearbox, it won't be much of it.

(I know --- pictures)
We've got the top and jugs off the spare motor. Plan on better pistons and jugs I got from a known better motor. Got 3 spare heads. Scotty wants to use the one the spare motor had. I'm looking at one of the extras that I bought which was from a good engine. We'll have to examine all of them closely over some beers. Spare engine had reported bad compression by the PO so new pistons and jugs are a good idea, though we never did do a compression test on it. We also realized we should have thoroughly cleaned it before taking it apart.

Junior was a great engine. I think it best to leave head and jugs & stiff as is. Take motor out, remove oil pan and see what I can of the tranny. I'm certain that's where it is.

Tonight I might pull the engine from Junior. If I do, I'll remove the oil pan and look inside.

I hope some twinners can come over this weekend. Would be nice to put an engine back in Junior. I plan on wrenching - I want Junior to come back from the dead.

Latest thought: If using the original head from the spare engine (reported low compression but never tested it), the exhaust cam had a chipped spot on the tach gear. I don't like chipped anything except chipped beef and potato chips.

1. I could use that head and cam and risk it for the tach gear hoping it wouldn't chip off any more (yes, photos will come)
2. Use that head, block off the tack gear and go with a newer electronic tach (which I have)
3. Use the head and swap the exhaust cam with one with a good gear (though I feel with an old engine head, the cams have worn to the pillow blocks so swapping cam shafts might not be the best, though would probably be fine for another 10k miles)
4. Use one of the other spare heads (pictures to come)

My instincts say it should be #2 or #4.

why not just pull juniors slugs, jugs, and head, then plop them onto a good lower?

I still think the tranny issue is totally fixable, unless you've polished any of the gears too far.

I guess i would look at the bad motor first so you know what went wrong, it might not be that big of a fix, you could just be able to swap the lowers of the motor and be done with it or just swap the trans, and be done.

Quote from: knowles on May 01, 2012, 09:03:49 PM
I guess i would look at the bad motor first so you know what went wrong, it might not be that big of a fix, you could just be able to swap the lowers of the motor and be done with it or just swap the trans, and be done.

One thing is Junior's engine was fantastic. So I really don't want to swap lowers. Right - I should try to look inside the trany. I was thinking of taking off the bottom oil pan while still on the bike to see if there was "stuff" down there and seeing if I could peer into the tranny with the spy cam. Oil cam out clean (well, old & dark after a year but no metal).

I read the instructions on the transmission. That is a 4 wrench out of 5 for difficulty in the Haynes book. I have no idea what a 5 wrench job would be. What would be harder than replacing the transmission?

It won't hurt to get a spare engine running. We do have a couple projects, never hurts to have a spare running engine; and if I have another running engine I have all the parts to make another bike (like does anyone really need 5 GS500's?)

Then, swapping lowers is no different that putting good jugs and a head on the spare motor. (I have too many spare parts).
There is the other motor with the damaged indexing pin for the timing rotor which I'll part out and use tran parts for Junior's motor.

Anyone have a good idea how to hold/mount/manipulate a motor when working on it?

I feel depression coming on me. Junior was my favorite and I killed him by down shifting at too high an RPM (I think).

What the hell is this? Found it in the sump filter. (Took off the bottom pan out of curiosity)


I think I'll take off the oil filter and see what's in there.

Here are some pictures in the tranny. Somehow the groves on some gears does not look right. I'll admit I'm not sure what I'm looking at. Anyone tell me what all this means or happens to be?
? There is a bolt on a shaft in the back of the engine. No one seems to ever mention that. If I pull off that bolt, can I see into the tran from the top? What's that bolt for?
(Ignore date on pictures. I just now got around to setting the cliock on the spy cam.)

More pictures.....  And I added more at the end

Could I have a damaged oil pump???

Oil after soaking through shop towel and pig-mat. Does not look good....


Oil filter...not good...


Looking into the oil pump - the center hole where the filter goes. This has strange scraping and a pile-up of some kind of stuff. Anyone know what this is I'm looking at? I'm not sure what I'm seeing since I haven't taken apart the bottom of a motor. Could this be a damaged oil pump?


The other port in the oil filter area. I assume this is oil coming from the engine so here's what shows in that hole:




OK - here's crap from the oil in the oil pan...


And here's the oil pan. another piece of that brown plastic here and lots of metal crap.

Latest late night update.

The metal crap IS NOT MAGNETIC!

A neodymium magnet did not attract the metal fragments.

What part of an engine is not attracted to a magnet? All I can think of is a piston.

Is the underside of a piston damaged?

If so, then replacing the piston should fix it. Down shifting stressed a piston? Could what I though of as cam noise really have been a piston starting to fall apart on the under side?

I'm guessing the oil filter and the sump screen caught all the crap. But what are the plastic bits?

Damn that's a mess of metal. Yeah a bike can run (not for long) with damaged pistons. Eventually the piston would destroy itself but yeah you caught it

Quote from: slipperymongoose on May 02, 2012, 02:04:07 AM
Damn that's a mess of metal. Yeah a bike can run (not for long) with damaged pistons. Eventually the piston would destroy itself but yeah you caught it

Boy I hope you are right. I would hate to have to crack open the case to get at the transmission.

I think I'll temporarily put the covers back on. Clean the outside of the engine so no dirt gets in when I (hopefully with help) take off the head and jugs to replace the jugs and pistons.

I'll still fix up the spare engine - we do need it for projects.

If it is the piston - I feel better tonight.
and if it is, would a good plan be:
1. Clean outside of engine so crap won't fall in
2. Pull head and jugs and both pistons
3. Put on new pistons and jugs (I have a matched set that all came from the same engine)
4. Replace any other seals or just replace them so they are new
5. Run for half hour or so to get metal crap into the oil filter
6. Change oil
7. Run a while
8. Change oil again in another hour of running to be sure crap is out of the engine
9. Probably change oil one more time after 100 miles (really, KM since his speedo is in KM because Junior is Canadian)

I still wonder what the plastic bits are. Any idea?

Are they flexible, but snap if you fold them? I want to guess some original gasket material (which would be fiber based).

That is a lit of metal shavings........being non-magnetic, I would say aluminum shavings. And since you are thinking transmission problems, I would guess the inside of the case got chewed up a little. But that's still a guess.

What rich said, alloy could be case, piston, or rod.

Plastic is brittle. Here's a cross sectional view.


One other interesting thing: after removing the valve cover, oil and side cover... i did press the starter for 5 seconds while scottychop was here. There was no clunking like there was when the engine was together and running. There were maybe 2 mild thuds.

Thinking on that, if the transmission were toast and making noise when really running, shouldn't there be noise when cranking?

If a piston, would noise go away if there were no spark plugs? The pistons DID go up and down when manually cranking when I checked the timing and wanted photos inside the cylinder with the piston at the bottom. If the piston was starting to fall apart, would this make sense or sound like what to expect?