Stratwhak shared this story of mystery metal in his 1995 XL883 conversion:
I was heading home from work and the engine dies on me at 45mph. I pop the clutch and it fires right up. Came to a stop and the engine sounds great. I go another 5 miles down the road running 60, engine starts rattling like crazy and dies again. I trailer the bike home and start trouble shooting. Took the plugs out and tried to roll the bike in gear, wouldn’t budge. Took the primary cover off and eyed the tranny over, it’s fine. Took the timing cover off, gears are in great shape. Put the bike in neutral and I was able to turn the engine backwards with the crankshaft nut but it would stop when the rear piston was at TDC. Finally a clue! Pulled the rear head and found a small piece of metal sitting on top of the cylinder.
Damage
Damage
More damage
Yes, the piece is magnetic
With the help of some good friends and the great guys at xlforum.net we went through the list of the usual suspects to source the metal, but all was OK.
This ring is complete
No scews missing from inside the carb
Another shot of the carb
Valve guide looks good
No, the ground electrode did not break off the spark plug
Then they finally got through to me that shrapnal can and will cross over through the intake manifold. Dude! Pull the front head already! Doh!
The culprit
Ouch
Looks expensive
Now for the $64,000 question: what happened and why?
DC in PHX writes about his 1999 XL Custom:
The story was that a wrist pin retaining clip was not installed properly (by my indie shop) the clip worked it’s way out, got ground up between the piston and cylinder wall, and found its way into the oil pump. If I was relying on an idiot light instead of a gauge I would probably not have detected the problem before disaster struck.
Adam writes:
Customer complaint of engine noise on 04 Softail. Jim pulled and check lifter and cams to check out. After further inspection found exhaust valve got a “little” hot. Also check ET sensor and how melted it was. Sorry about pic quality on some. These cheap cameras suck! That guy must have left the bike on idle for a week!!! Obsessive compulsive idler!
I’m pretty sure that exhaust seat is not supposed to be moved away from the head like that. Oops.
Adam writes:
Kid bought it and while riding on highway tire decided to let go. Bike went down but not bad. Kid’s all right. That’s all I have now. It was a OE Dunlop D205. Not the best tire Dunlop ever made………
Sorry for the blurry pics. Blame Adam actually!
These pictures are from a 2003 Buell® XB9R which was converted into a race bike for CCS/ASRA. In 2004, we installed a Nallin 1169cc conversion kit with oversized valves & a port job. The compression ratio is 13.1:1 and was running with a Zipper’s 585 cam. We had an oiling problem the first season which damaged the cams, pistons, valves and guides. At that point, Nallin was unable to provide us the same pistons, and when re-working the heads installed the wrong size valves and seats. Our machinist had to make pistons to work with the heads. No problem.
After getting it running again for the 2006 racing season, a valve seat fell out of the head after a few dyno pulls while we were tuning the fuel injection. Loss of compression soon followed. This damaged both cylinders, heads & pistons.
Starting from scratch once again, we got a set of stock heads with stock valves, and with minor porting got higher flow numbers and a better curve that the Nallin heads with oversized valves (edit: different flow bench and operator.) We are currently waiting for the cylinders to be repaired or replaced. Hopefully we’ll be running in May 2006 for Autobahn.
This is a shot of a 2003 FLHTCI crankcase where a tappet roller had failed. It might be hard to tell from this picture, but this motor required new crankcases, new cams, new tappets (obviously) and a new oil pump, at the very least.
Before it stopped running, this motor had high performance cams, hi compression pistons, SE cylinder heads, etc. I don’t think it was covered by warranty.
Take special note of the bore in the case where the rear inner cam bearing used to be. It was so far gone that the cam wore through the inner support bearing and began running directly on the crankcase. There is quite a bit of wear in that area.
These pictures are from a Shovelhead of unknown year. It’s a custom bike with a blower on it. We suspect the bearing supporting the end of the pinion shaft extension had too much clearance, and the bottom end starved for oil due to the excessive clearance.
This was a fresh motor with around 100 miles on the rebuild. The next rebuild is going to be really expensive.
I forget what motor this is from. I had a half dozen or so, and without measuring, I can’t be sure which motor this is out of. In addition to being bent like a pretzel, the top of the valve broke off, above the keeper groove, and of course the valve guide was broken and the the piston was damaged. Let’s say “loss of compression followed.”
Not much to say here, except pinion gears on Sportster® motorcycles are supposed to be one piece, not two.
Not sure what happened here. Any thoughts? Post your comments above (or below, depending on what page you’re viewing.)
A friend of mine was loading his FLHR Road King® onto a trailer for a long trip. He is “vertically challenged” and his Road King is necessarily lowered. A lowered motorcycle and a motorcycle trailer with a short (read: steep) ramp is not a good combination when you are trying to load your motorcycle by yourself.
So, he starts the bike up, and takes a running start at the trailer. He makes his way up the ramp until the front tire clears the top, and starts to level out in the trailer. This makes the frame closer to the point where the ramp connects to the trailer. The frame bottoms out on the trailer at the same time the jiffy stand spring catches the trailer.
I wish I had a picture of a normal spring. Let’s just say it’s typically shorter than this. This one measures a full 10″. I think normal would be about 3″.
He left the bike on the trailer, supported by the frame and the now-loose jiffy stand. I brought him a new spring, and we quickly installed it. We found a better place to load the trailer and loaded him up without further incident. I got to keep the spring for my efforts.