Sad morning in my garage

Started my '04 FJR this morning to ride it to work.

Didn't start with its usual calm burble to life. Seemed to be missing a cylinder maybe. Not worried, hasn't been started in a couple of weeks. Twist the throttle just a bit - I'm not really into blipping a cold motor.

Uh oh.

Bad bad really bad noise from the motor. Metal on metal impact. pakpakpakpakpak. Actually my first thought was that a header had come loose. That's how loud it was. But it doesn't really sound like that. My totally inexpert thought just based on the sound is a dropped valve. This is not a tick guys. This is like hitting something with a hammer. I shut it back off, checked the oil (again). Couldn't resist. Restart. Same noise. Shut it back off.

This bike has had excellent care. I bought it with 5k on it from a friend who takes neurotically good care of his bikes. He has a white board in his garage with upcoming and just completed routine maintenance tasks listed. I changed the oil and filter right after I got it, then again at 9400 and again at 12300. I rode it from Atlanta to Colorado and back in June. It needs an oil change now (15800-the CO trip mostly). I put plugs in it at 11000 and synched the throttle bodies the last time it was started, about two weeks ago.

I'm stunned. I love riding this bike. I can't think of a good alternative. This just sux.

I will try to get it to a trusted mechanic tomorrow for real diagnosis.

:angry2:

Sorry to hear your story

Please keep us posted on the diagnosis, that is a wierd one based on it running just fine before.

Sorry to hear about your problem! Hold out hope that is is something like a broken plug or a stuck cam chain tensioner. Mayhaps a valve spring broke. If it had hydraulic-ed a cylinder it probably wouldn't have cranked. Don't recall hearing of this problem before.

Edited: That 'plug' I mentioned is supposed to be spark plug. It isn't unheard of for the ceramic portion of the plug to break and drop into the cylinder. Makes one heck of a racket and causes really rough running due to one dead cylinder.

I have heard the same noise recently in my bike due to it sitting for the first 2 weeks of its life. Keep cranking with full throttle and she'll fire right up and the noise will go away.

Yikes, I hate suprises like that.

Are you tempted to start it again and allow a warm-up, or is the noise that bad ?

Engines don't usually drop valves while they're sitting still. If it ran fine when you last shut it off, then it's most likely a mis-fire on one or maybe two cylinders. Make sure the gas is clean and fresh. Make sure battery voltage is up to snuff. Look at the plugs to see if one is wet while the others look fine. One of these should lead you to it, at least on a bike this new. An older bike would be a different story.

It may have had an injector leak significantly causing a hydraulic lock in one cylinder. If it happens on a cylinder that is just after TDC the engine can rotate sufficiently for other cylinders to start and then the RPM/inertia carries the hydraulic'ed cylinder past TDC bending the conn rod. The rod, being bent, is shorter now so on the next trip past BDC it gets pulled slightly futher downward, closer to the crank and the crank whacks the skirt making a loud noise. Not saying for sure this is what happened but I have seen it on other motors over the years. Definitely it can happen. The old Honda CBX was famous for this. If a carb on the left side stuck the needle while sitting on the side stand a cylinder on the left end could fill up partially with gas and/or suck in a slug of gas when the intake opened on cranking. Other cylinders would fire and when the left end cylinder came around it would bend the rod. I have personally seen three like that and heard about many more. Not a common problem on a port fuel injected bike but still certainly possible. One of the few things that can explain how a perfectly running engine can be suddenly failed/noisy like that from just sitting in the garage. Especially on motorcycle engines with the fuel tank above the engine where a leaking carb or injector can fill the cylinder due to the head of gasoline above it.

Drain the oil and inspect for excessive gasoline smell and/or debris. If the piston hits the crank often bits fall off. If heavy gas smell is present then it is a clue that a lot of fuel was in a cylinder and ran past the rings. Pull the tank off, loosen the fuel rail and pull up the injectors so that they are clear of the ports. See if any fuel is present on an injector tip (drips) and/or hook up the fuel lines to the tank and turn on the key to energize the pump and see if an injector sprays fuel....it shouldn't at key on unless it is stuck open.

jestal said:

It may have had an injector leak significantly causing a hydraulic lock in one cylinder. If it happens on a cylinder that is just after TDC the engine can rotate sufficiently for other cylinders to start and then the RPM/inertia carries the hydraulic'ed cylinder past TDC bending the conn rod. The rod, being bent, is shorter now so on the next trip past BDC it gets pulled slightly futher downward, closer to the crank and the crank whacks the skirt making a loud noise. Not saying for sure this is what happened but I have seen it on other motors over the years. Definitely it can happen. The old Honda CBX was famous for this. If a carb on the left side stuck the needle while sitting on the side stand a cylinder on the left end could fill up partially with gas and/or suck in a slug of gas when the intake opened on cranking. Other cylinders would fire and when the left end cylinder came around it would bend the rod. I have personally seen three like that and heard about many more. Not a common problem on a port fuel injected bike but still certainly possible. One of the few things that can explain how a perfectly running engine can be suddenly failed/noisy like that from just sitting in the garage. Especially on motorcycle engines with the fuel tank above the engine where a leaking carb or injector can fill the cylinder due to the head of gasoline above it.
Drain the oil and inspect for excessive gasoline smell and/or debris. If the piston hits the crank often bits fall off. If heavy gas smell is present then it is a clue that a lot of fuel was in a cylinder and ran past the rings. Pull the tank off, loosen the fuel rail and pull up the injectors so that they are clear of the ports. See if any fuel is present on an injector tip (drips) and/or hook up the fuel lines to the tank and turn on the key to energize the pump and see if an injector sprays fuel....it shouldn't at key on unless it is stuck open.

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Now that will scare a guy.. sure hope that's not it. It can happen though.. I once put diesel fuel in my yz426... :huh:

The thing that caught my attention is that you say you did the TBS the last time the bike was running. I can't think of anything related to the TBS that can cause what you describe, but I frequently find that when something isn't right it is related to the last thing that changed.

Geezer said:

The thing that caught my attention is that you say you did the TBS the last time the bike was running. I can't think of anything related to the TBS that can cause what you describe, but I frequently find that when something isn't right it is related to the last thing that changed.

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Yea, I agree. Caught that tidbit after re-reading. Nothing should have caused that but the incident seems odd to happen after some work like that. Certainly worth checking anything you touched in the process. Maybe a plug fractured on install and you are hearing a tiny piece of foreign material between the head and piston crown...?? Pull the plugs and check for condition and compression before ripping into it or giving up.

Thanks for all the feedback.

You're right, of course, about dropping a valve while not running.

I have gone back over everything I touched while doing the TBS. You don't have to touch much to do that but its obviously a suspect.

I'm going to take it to a pro at this point. I've done lash checks on my other two bikes (VFR, SV) but that's about as far into the inside of an engine as I want to go and just pulling the valve cover on the FJR looks like a major undertaking.

Hopefully it is something minor and any damage is limited to whatever specific part broke. If they find something minor, like a broken plug, that'd be great. Even if I found that I'm not equipped, at least in terms of experience, to get the debris out of the cylinder and make sure its all put back together right.

Re: skyway's suggestion. First, she cranks OK. No problem. Just makes this horrid noise once she's running. I don't want to make it worse by trying to rev it away. If it was just rough idle/hard start/stumble sort of thing, I'd go for that but this is something inside. Hopefully something minor. As for just letting it warm up, well, yeah, IMHO the noise is too bad for that. Like I said, it could be something pretty minor at this point but getting worse every time it makes the noise.

wallypiper said:

I'm going to take it to a pro at this point.

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Is it still under Y.E.S.?

toecutter said:

Is it still under Y.E.S.?

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No. Never had it. It was too late to get it when I bought it.

Meanwhile, the mechanic has called to tell me a small oil sample he drained out had a lot of bronze in it. Thay may mean a rod bearing failure, although it could be coming from somewhere else. He is going to drain the rest of the oil and call me back. I have high hopes that its not a rod bearing because of how abruptly it started. No noise, shut off and sit a couple of weeks, big noise. It just seems to me that a rod bearing would have started knocking a little and gotten worse. We'll see. He will probably be back in touch with me today and let me know more.

Are you in the Atlanta area. If so Im curious about which dealer is working on your bike. I have an unrepaired 05 ticker. The Reason I have not had it repaired under warranty is because I have zero faith in any of the local Yamaha dealers. Just wondering if you are in the ATL, who is going to tear it apart for you. Where ever you are I wish you a quick and dare I say inexpensive repair bill. Good luck with your diagnosis.

Bronze is geartrain. Lead, tin, steel is bearing material.

GA CYCLE RIDER said:

Are you in the Atlanta area. If so Im curious about which dealer is working on your bike.

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Dealer? :fie:

Are you kidding? Really, I have no personal experience with any Yamaha dealer in the Atlanta area other than an occasional parts purchase so I just have a hard time trusting any of them with something like this.

Its in the expert hands of Bill Ristau at Marietta Motorsports, recently reopened by Craig "Huey" Stewart and his wife Rikki. Huey is BBC racing, running two bikes in AMA FX this year.

They build FX bikes for Opie Caylor and Tony Meiring.

Highly recommended shop.

Bill has called me three times this afternoon to update me on what he's found and what he's doing to my baby. :thumbsupsmiley:

(770) 419-2525

Lastest call, by the way, was just to ease my mind as he found on draining all the oil and cutting open the filter that there really doesn't apear to be enough metal there to indicate a bearing failure. Seems the first sample he drained out had most of the metal present in it already, not much more was there. He's starting to look at the top now. He started out by checking the clutch/primary gear area where he says it is not unusual to find a small piece of debris riding a gear and making a knock every time it comes around. It was easy (for an expert wrench) to check. He didn't find anything but it only took him about 15 minutes to get it opened up, pull the clutch out and inspect it. I like that. Check the simplest easiest quickest thing first. Then he tried adjusting the position of the counterbalancers (you can do this with the engine running) to see if that changed the noise. And he had absolutely no problem with me standing and watching what he was doing - in fact I think he enjoys it, pointing out things and explaining what he's doing and what I'm looking at with no condescension at all. Just an enthusiatic guy comfortable with his hands buried in an engine and happy to explain and discuss and answer questions.

At any rate, I probably won't hear any more till Tuesday sometime as they are closed on Sunday and Monday.

without a warranty to back you up, sounds like you have it in competant hands. too bad the franchises do not seem to have that level of interest in repairing the very bikes that they sell and therfore supposed to know about in detail.

Some probably do.

I've heard good things about Yamaha of Canton, but I've never been there personally.

The problem is that it eventually comes down to the individual with the wrench in his hands. His attitude, experience and attention to detail really matter. Since this isn't a warranty issue for me, I took it to one of the most widely recommended mechanics I know of. I'm sure there are others and some may work at dealers.

Here's the thing. When I was doing the TBS, I dropped one of those aggravating little spring clamps that go over the rubber cap on the vacuum port. Now, chances are that cap would never come off even without the spring clamp on it. They are a tight fit and it is a vacuum port, after all. But its my bike, I ride it and I didnt' know where the damn thing went so I stopped what I was doing and searched until I found it. It was sitting in a fairly accessible spot where I could reach it with some long needlenose pliers. It probably wouldn't have done any damage sitting there and would have eventually fallen harmlessly to the ground somewhere. But it might have landed somewhere in the throttle linkage or some similarly tricky place where it could have caused me a problem someday. I just don't trust strangers to be like that when working on my bike. They have another customer bike sitting there probably, waiting for them to do something to it. Finding the little clamp was time consuming, aggravating and probably unnecessary. I trust Bill to act like he's working on his own bike. I watched him work for a couple of hours and chatted with him. Lots of people have recommended him and what I saw confirmed their faith in him. At a dealer, if you don't know the mechanic or have similar recommendations and contact, you just don't know whether he'd take the time to find that little clamp or not. I believe Bill Ristau would. I watched him carefully examine every tooth on the ring gear on my clutch basket, looking for any evidence that some piece of debris has been there, probing at suspicious bits with a dental probe. Meticulous.

Hey Wally, It's me, Bill. And hi to the rest of you guys here in FJR land. Thank you for the kind words Wally, I will try to keep it from going to my head. And in my attempt to not be proud AND to get your Yamaha happy again,,, I am asking for someone to give me some actual numbers for cylinder compression. I checked yours and they were seamingly high. And while they took longer than I like to reach their max pressure they topped out quite high at 205, 205, 205, 195. I looked and looked in the manual and only found "10.8 to 1". 200 psi is higher than 10.8 to 1. Do you remember me mentioning the old Wisconsin engine yesterday?? It too began knocking in a very similar way due to too much carbon built up in the combustion chambers. Which would also raise compression too, ya know. SO, if you or one of your FJR buddies could give me some real numbers of their engines compression, I can use those numbers to help me to know if this could be the source of our noise.

Gotta run, don't want to be late for church! I'll check in later this afternoon, Bill