Table Of Contents
- Damage is discovered
- Removing valves, piston, testing valve springs
- Tappets and cam
- Timing gear replacement
- Top end parts
- Camshaft prep
- Camshaft install
- Piston and Cylinder install
- Cylinder head install
- Finishing touches
- First start
- An easy fix
Saturday, Jan 4, 2014 [25,724 miles]
valve springs
New valve springs
A month or so back I was passing a car in 2nd gear and the bike lost power at about 55 MPH. It felt like floating valves. New valve springs aren’t that expensive. I bought some. They arrived in the middle of December. Today I thought I’d install them. Or at least start the installation process.
cylinder head removal prep
Bike on lift
Remove tail pipe
Loosen header nut
Almost ready to remove carb
Left side exhaust removed
I put the bike on the lift and removed the carbs, the exhaust system, and the valve covers. So far so good. I’m thinking I’ll probably complete the entire job before the afternoon is over.
remove cylinder heads
valve train
Ready to remove cylinder head
Right head
Left side head
The exhaust side head screws on the right side were a little tight as is usually the case. That head suffers from butterhead deformation. All-in-all the heads didn’t look too bad. The pistons, on the other hand…
intake valve hitting piston
Say what?
Left side, too
Both left and right pistons show indentations where they’ve been hitting the intake valve. I can’t believe I never heard this. The engine always sounded find other than some start-up piston slap that has always been there. My initial assumption is that the sport cam I installed in the bike almost 4 years ago has too much lift for the intake. But maybe the problem lies elsewhere.
keep the dirt out
While I think about this
I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this. Pulling the engine from the frame and pulling the cam was not on my things to do in 2014 list. I suppose I can pull the cam, if necessary, in situ.
In any case I’ll have to pull the cylinders, replace the pistons, check the tappets, and a lot of other things that I also didn’t want to do in 2014. I’m glad I’ve got my new GS to ride in the mean while.