Post by scuba10jdl on Nov 26, 2013 22:17:05 GMT -6
Hey all,
I recently took a trip with my dad (me on an '02 Piglet and my dad on the '86 454 LTD) over the 4th of July. We did a total of about 1000 miles in 3 days on our bikes. Everything was awesome, except for the fact that my little 454 drank about 1QT/300 miles during the trip. It was bad enough to see smoking upon acceleration on the on-ramps and up hills. Obviously a piston ring issue....
Thus began the parts ordering and teardown of the top end. I did valve guide seals while I was in there just for good measure, and because they are cheap and easy to install when you have the heads apart. Hate to get it all back together and find out it was the seals (it wasn't) that could have been replace in 10 minutes for about $10.
I've included the imgur link to the album of the rebuild (the image hosting on this site is very poor, no major image hosting sites are accepted....:/).
imgur.com/a/TKm6V#0
I'll try to fend off most questions by giving a run down of what I've done during this rebuild.
First step is obvious, ordering parts! Under $200 USD for flex hone, seals, rings, and the associated gaskets/tools.
Second step is stripping the bike of all the stuff cluttering the valve covers/cylinders. Radiators, gas tank, coolant reservoir, coils, secondary air injection, etc. all had to get taken off.
Then I could begin taking off the top end. Just like a valve clearance check. After that you remove the CCT and pull the cams. Tying the camchain to the frame to keep it out of the way allows you to start loosening the head bolts. During tear down, it doesn't really matter how you position the engine, but it is easier to put it to #2 cylinder TDC-compression , because that is where it is reassembled and cam-timed).
The heads come off easy, valves, springs, retainers, etc. all together. You can set this aside for later. I cleaned them up a bit and then reinstalled them. No need for lapping or a full sonic-clean in my case. A full resto might need this, but I'm going on cheap rebuild.
The jugs/cylinders (I come from the H-D world, where the cylinders are individual and referred to as jugs) come off next. Pretty simple. Just make sure to take off all the oil line bolts and you're good. They pop off with minimum effort. This gives you access to the pistons, rings, and the small end of the con-rod. I took the pistons off, which is easy by removing the wrist-pin clips.
I later took apart the valves and springs. The c-clamp with a socket cut apart and welded to it is my homemade valve spring compressor. The $10 I spent on that sure beats the $200 retail for the Kawasaki tool.
At this point, my tear down is over. Now begins the rebuild/install phase.
Honing the cylinders was accomplished with a Flex-Hone. Highly recommend this tool. It goes into any standard drill chuck. Unless you are boring/piston clearancing, you really only need this. It will re-hatch your cylinders and clean it up. Mine had some pitting in cylinder #2, and it helped out. Can't complain.
After the honing and cleaning process is done, I went about setting/checking the ring gap. Fortunately, Kawasaki does a good job and sets the ring gaps within factory spec. A ok on that count. The oil rings are almost always in spec (I've never seen one out of spec, which is typically <.050" in all the engines I've built). Then you can use the piston as a squaring tool as seen in the pics. With a careful hand as to where to position the rings, the gapped rings went onto the cylinder, which went onto the con-rod.
Once I reinstalled the rings on the piston, I reattached them to the con-rod. Plenty of assembly lube to take care of that first start lubrication. I then set the jugs back down on the pistons and base gasket. Reattached oil ines, etc. The heads came back on after positioning the cam chain guides.
I ran into a mistake/problem here, a consequence of rushing and just trying to get the job done as quick as possible. I accidentally installed the rear CCT guide wrong. It was stuck behind the block casting, which meant it couldn't do its job. Thus I had to remove the head again. The only problem? I busted the tiny 6mm screw that held the outermost portion of the head on. Fortunately, (after 2 weeks of delaying because of this issue), it had broken off where it wasn't threaded. Easy removal and I backed it out using a vice grip.
Correctly, I reinstalled the heads. Then I put the cams back in, covered in assembly lube. Timed them and put the cam journal caps back on. A valve clearance was done after the rockers and shafts were reinstalled, again with assembly lube. Then I put all the supporting covers and hardware back on. Refilling the radiator, topping off the oil, and making sure everything was good. A few manual rotations to make sure nothing was interfering and it was time to start it up.
I use a heat-cycle break-in method after extensive studying (I work in the automotive industry, I have access to a LOT of resources most people don't). 30 seconds on the first start, then 60s, 90s, 120s. Then 1 mile riding, and then 2 miles riding. All of these are interrupted with a COMPLETE cool down of the engine (~2 hours, cool to the touch and then some)
. This process alone took me a couple of days. Trust me, it is worth it. After the 2 mile ride, you are good to do 50 miles at max-50% throttle, varying the RPMs. Then you can bump it up to 75% throttle, varying the RPMs, until you hit 500 miles. Once over that 500 mile line, you are fully broken in. Change the oil and filter, and then dyno tune, run however you want, etc.
The reasoning behind this is a phenomenon called micro-welding. Piston rings are never 100% concentric, nor are the cylinders. The means that some points of the ring-cylinder interface are more in contact than others, leading to hot spots. The idea behind the heat cycle break-in is to reduce heat at these high friction points until they all wear to an even seal. I've made dozens of bikes this way, and all have been high performers, well exceeding my expected power targets.
After I finally got all this work done, I ran into a starter issue (I had been having starter problems already (and the extra compression of a good engine was the final knife in the gut). I've replaced that with a new 2006 EX500 starter, but haven't gotten a chance to run it yet since we had a sudden snowstorm here.
Feel free to ask questions about anything. I'll try to answer them as soon and as best as I can. Again, the imgur link has all the pictures I took (not comprehensive). Hopefully y'all can learn something from all this.
I recently took a trip with my dad (me on an '02 Piglet and my dad on the '86 454 LTD) over the 4th of July. We did a total of about 1000 miles in 3 days on our bikes. Everything was awesome, except for the fact that my little 454 drank about 1QT/300 miles during the trip. It was bad enough to see smoking upon acceleration on the on-ramps and up hills. Obviously a piston ring issue....
Thus began the parts ordering and teardown of the top end. I did valve guide seals while I was in there just for good measure, and because they are cheap and easy to install when you have the heads apart. Hate to get it all back together and find out it was the seals (it wasn't) that could have been replace in 10 minutes for about $10.
I've included the imgur link to the album of the rebuild (the image hosting on this site is very poor, no major image hosting sites are accepted....:/).
imgur.com/a/TKm6V#0
I'll try to fend off most questions by giving a run down of what I've done during this rebuild.
First step is obvious, ordering parts! Under $200 USD for flex hone, seals, rings, and the associated gaskets/tools.
Second step is stripping the bike of all the stuff cluttering the valve covers/cylinders. Radiators, gas tank, coolant reservoir, coils, secondary air injection, etc. all had to get taken off.
Then I could begin taking off the top end. Just like a valve clearance check. After that you remove the CCT and pull the cams. Tying the camchain to the frame to keep it out of the way allows you to start loosening the head bolts. During tear down, it doesn't really matter how you position the engine, but it is easier to put it to #2 cylinder TDC-compression , because that is where it is reassembled and cam-timed).
The heads come off easy, valves, springs, retainers, etc. all together. You can set this aside for later. I cleaned them up a bit and then reinstalled them. No need for lapping or a full sonic-clean in my case. A full resto might need this, but I'm going on cheap rebuild.
The jugs/cylinders (I come from the H-D world, where the cylinders are individual and referred to as jugs) come off next. Pretty simple. Just make sure to take off all the oil line bolts and you're good. They pop off with minimum effort. This gives you access to the pistons, rings, and the small end of the con-rod. I took the pistons off, which is easy by removing the wrist-pin clips.
I later took apart the valves and springs. The c-clamp with a socket cut apart and welded to it is my homemade valve spring compressor. The $10 I spent on that sure beats the $200 retail for the Kawasaki tool.
At this point, my tear down is over. Now begins the rebuild/install phase.
Honing the cylinders was accomplished with a Flex-Hone. Highly recommend this tool. It goes into any standard drill chuck. Unless you are boring/piston clearancing, you really only need this. It will re-hatch your cylinders and clean it up. Mine had some pitting in cylinder #2, and it helped out. Can't complain.
After the honing and cleaning process is done, I went about setting/checking the ring gap. Fortunately, Kawasaki does a good job and sets the ring gaps within factory spec. A ok on that count. The oil rings are almost always in spec (I've never seen one out of spec, which is typically <.050" in all the engines I've built). Then you can use the piston as a squaring tool as seen in the pics. With a careful hand as to where to position the rings, the gapped rings went onto the cylinder, which went onto the con-rod.
Once I reinstalled the rings on the piston, I reattached them to the con-rod. Plenty of assembly lube to take care of that first start lubrication. I then set the jugs back down on the pistons and base gasket. Reattached oil ines, etc. The heads came back on after positioning the cam chain guides.
I ran into a mistake/problem here, a consequence of rushing and just trying to get the job done as quick as possible. I accidentally installed the rear CCT guide wrong. It was stuck behind the block casting, which meant it couldn't do its job. Thus I had to remove the head again. The only problem? I busted the tiny 6mm screw that held the outermost portion of the head on. Fortunately, (after 2 weeks of delaying because of this issue), it had broken off where it wasn't threaded. Easy removal and I backed it out using a vice grip.
Correctly, I reinstalled the heads. Then I put the cams back in, covered in assembly lube. Timed them and put the cam journal caps back on. A valve clearance was done after the rockers and shafts were reinstalled, again with assembly lube. Then I put all the supporting covers and hardware back on. Refilling the radiator, topping off the oil, and making sure everything was good. A few manual rotations to make sure nothing was interfering and it was time to start it up.
I use a heat-cycle break-in method after extensive studying (I work in the automotive industry, I have access to a LOT of resources most people don't). 30 seconds on the first start, then 60s, 90s, 120s. Then 1 mile riding, and then 2 miles riding. All of these are interrupted with a COMPLETE cool down of the engine (~2 hours, cool to the touch and then some)
. This process alone took me a couple of days. Trust me, it is worth it. After the 2 mile ride, you are good to do 50 miles at max-50% throttle, varying the RPMs. Then you can bump it up to 75% throttle, varying the RPMs, until you hit 500 miles. Once over that 500 mile line, you are fully broken in. Change the oil and filter, and then dyno tune, run however you want, etc.
The reasoning behind this is a phenomenon called micro-welding. Piston rings are never 100% concentric, nor are the cylinders. The means that some points of the ring-cylinder interface are more in contact than others, leading to hot spots. The idea behind the heat cycle break-in is to reduce heat at these high friction points until they all wear to an even seal. I've made dozens of bikes this way, and all have been high performers, well exceeding my expected power targets.
After I finally got all this work done, I ran into a starter issue (I had been having starter problems already (and the extra compression of a good engine was the final knife in the gut). I've replaced that with a new 2006 EX500 starter, but haven't gotten a chance to run it yet since we had a sudden snowstorm here.
Feel free to ask questions about anything. I'll try to answer them as soon and as best as I can. Again, the imgur link has all the pictures I took (not comprehensive). Hopefully y'all can learn something from all this.
