Thats what I was trying to tell gabe?

 

Dear Motorhead, Mom told me how much you enjoyed your session with her.

 

Dear Gabe, sorry to here about the dirt in your engine, I know how frustrating a situation this can be- is your bike new? Gabe be sure that when your are tearing down your engine that you replace all old gaskets and o-rings with knew ones. Also ,properly torquing all bolts and torquing all bolts evenly is the most important aspect of engine rebuilding. Improperly torqued bolts can cause warpage of the gasket leading to improper seals, leading to leaks. Many times people compensate for these air leaks with jetting adjustments that prevent the engine from leaning out and seizing but this fails to prevent contaminants from being pulled into the engine. Certain aspects of the engine act as a vaccum ( ie. the cylinder head) and tend to pull these contaminants within. Remember Gabe, an engine must not only combust but it must also be a sealed system only allowing an amount of filtered air metered by the carb. There are so many different ways for contaminants to enter an engine that you must be absolutely meticulous with your work ,are you will constantly have to tear it down. I once spent a whole season repeatedly tearing down an old ride when a mechanic traced the problem back to warped gaskets due to improper torquing. Also take care when riding (espically ) in sand that you don't pull the plug without first making sure all sand that has acculumated around the plug has been cleaned off. I have seen numerous times well meaning want-to-be mechanics pull plugs in the middle of a ride to check them- I wonder where all that sand goes? Well I hoped some of this helped and good luck with your bike. Kaiser

 

Well, she IS a professional you know, so she does her job rather well. I look forward to having another 'session' with yo mamma.

 

Kaiser,

I was not bassing you. All of my posts where towards Gabe. I'm totally with you on this one.

 

Yes, my bike is a '00 model that is a little over a year old. Yes, dirt in the engine sucks, and in my case is a direct result of poor filtration by K&N.

As for your torquing advice, it is completely in line - a service manual is most handy for torque values as well as torque pattern.

I certainly hope you don't take this the wrong way, this is purely an attempt to be helpful and to clear up how various leaks (in the engine assembly itself) will affect the engine operation.

Barring some sort of casting flaw in the head itself.... The intake manifold to cylinder head is the only junction that has vacuum at most times when running. On a motorcycle or ATV it is usually a rubber/steel to aluminum meeting which is sometimes sealed with a gasket sometimes an o-ring. If a person had a large enough vacuum leak here to suck a substantial amount of sand or dirt, they would have a very difficult time attempting to compensate with jetting, even if you did get somewhat close, ridability would be substantially affected. I'm also not sure why a person would think their jetting was in need of adjustment if the engine suddenly began running lean whether this happened on a ride or after re-assembly.

The valve cover to cylinder head seal, if broken enough to allow sand to enter would have a substantial oil leak. This area is also exposed to positive pressure most of the time vs vacuum.

The cylinder head to cylinder junction is exposed to both pressure and vacuum. Fortunately, the pressure is much greater and if the seal here is broken significantly on an air cooled engine you will have fire and noise coming out alerting you to the situation (been there, done that on an old 200X)

The cylinder to case junction, the same situation applies as the valvecover to head - oil leak would result - this applies to the rest of the case seals as well.

But.... If your case against Honda is what this is all about, lets say your intake manifold was leaking straight from the Honda factory, the bike should have run poorly enough that you would have known something was wrong long before sand could have damaged the engine. If it leaked because you had it apart and didn't re-assemble it properly, Honda cannot be held liable.

You are right about ths spark plug, when removing the plug on an air-cooled 4 stroke one must be very careful as the cavity in which the spark plug sits can sometimes hold a lot of contaminants. Not quite as important on a liquid cooled 2 stroke as any contamination would be easy to both see and clean away. The same goes for anytime you open the engine in any way, the engine itself and the area around it should be cleaned and free from any dirt or sand.

BTW - why did you remove your e-mail address from your profile?

 

Has anyone tried removing their airbox lid and then replacing the lid with an outerwear? I have a K&N with outerwear, and outerwear where the lid used to be. I ride in sand, mud, dust, everything and i have no problems. NOTE: I also change my K&N after every ride.



norcalatver rides a 1999 440EX with 13:1 compression,full race cam, big valve kit, 39mm FCR carb, TCS suspension, renthal bars, walsh anti vibe steering stem, Tim Farr race nerfs, turf tamer rears, riken radials front, titanium rear axle and rotor on the way, and more.