Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's V-Rod.....

[nusman68]

Yeah, you read it correctly. The story:

My neighbor's V-rod began 'missing' while on a short ride a couple of weeks ago; he got it home, then took it in the following week to the local H-D dealership which was only a few miles away; I gave him a ride back. He told me the service writer told him that it 'wouldn't be cheap to fix' whatever it was. :glare: My neighbor was hoping the problem might be just a clogged fuel filter/strainer. He gave me the update today:

The dealership found that one of the ignition coils had stopped working entirely, (unknown reason) causing a dead cylinder. The fuel injector for said cylinder continued to function, filling up the crankcase with raw fuel, which lead to lubrication failure and trashed the whole engine. He went on to say they drained about 8 qts. of gas/oil out of the crankcase (I do not know the normal capacity); I'm sure he knows, he's a lubrication engineer, no less! Repair estimate : 3 grand! :dribble: His hopes went up in smoke, until.........

The dealership checked their records, found he still had time left on the extended warranty he purchased with the bike, that he had forgotten about! (it's a 2002 he bought new; he rides another bike more often)

Total bill? 50.00 deductible. Can't ***** too much about that, I guess. He told me he paid 1400. for the warranty; obviously it just paid for itself!

 

[Shinden]

Sounds nasty :dribble:

The dealership found that one of the ignition coils had stopped working entirely, (unknown reason) causing a dead cylinder. The fuel injector for said cylinder continued to function, filling up the crankcase with raw fuel, which lead to lubrication failure and trashed the whole engine.

I expect this could happen to other bikes, as well as V-Rods.

Anyone else heard of this happening to other bikes?

Maybe it is a good idea not to keep riding if there is a "missing" problem? Might be a tough call at the time though.

 

[Dangerous Dave]

That's kind of interesting actually. I'm a Toyota mechanic. On our vehicles, the ECM not only fires the coils, but looks for a confirmation signal that the coil actually fired...something about counter-electromotive force. Anyway, if it doesn't get a confirmation signal after so many cycles, it will kill injection to that cylinder to avoid just that kinda thing. Not to mention saving the catalytic converter from certain meltdown. I guess that little software blurb isn't universal.

 

[v65]

Now being somewhat of a HD fan I normally don't get the bashing on this forum, but I think I need to make sure I understand this. He has a 4 year old motorcycle with 2200 miles on it that he paid $1400 for an extendend warranty? Trying to understate the case, I don't think I could be happy with that combination.

 

[Geezer]

Seems very odd that he was able to ride home on a two cylinder bike with one cylinder completely deal and a crankcase filling up with liquid creating lots of back pressure. Power must have been way down. I would also expect some of that unburned fuel to come out the exhaut and smelling pretty bad for anyone behind him.

 

[Bounce]

Seems very odd that he was able to ride home on a two cylinder bike with one cylinder completely deal and a crankcase filling up with liquid creating lots of back pressure. Power must have been way down. I would also expect some of that unburned fuel to come out the exhaut and smelling pretty bad for anyone behind him.

One guy finished The Iron Butt rally on only 1, of 2, cylinders. It was a Guzzi though.

 

[sparky3008]

Unfortunately most of the problems I have heard from friends or neighbors that have HD have been electrical.

Don't know what that means if anything just throwing it out there.

 

[bramfrank]

Wouldn't you expect to notice that the machine is running on half-power, running rough?

How long do you need to run that bike on a single cylinder to get the crankcase to fill with gasoline? Most of the gas would likely be ejected on the exhaust stroke, no?

Running a machine in that state long enough to kill the engine likely constitutes abuse - HD would probably have been in a defensible position to deny coverage.

Your friend is very lucky . . . twice.

 

[FJRMGM]

this whole story sounds like B.S. to me.. Filled the crankcase with fuel - not likely...

 

[nusman68]

Seems very odd that he was able to ride home on a two cylinder bike with one cylinder completely deal and a crankcase filling up with liquid creating lots of back pressure. Power must have been way down. I would also expect some of that unburned fuel to come out the exhaut and smelling pretty bad for anyone behind him.

Yeah, he told me power was way down...he mentioned it was all but undriveable. I told him if I had known it was that bad, (I thought it was just an intermittent 'miss') I would have trailered the bike to the dealer for him (I have a dual bike trailer). I met him at the dealer, (i.e. didn't follow him) so I can't comment on the exhaust inquiry. I'll never be a Harley guy, but I was impressed that the dealer covered it, even if the cost of the warranty was (to me) high.

@FJRMGM: The crankcase wasn't 'full' of fuel only, but so much fuel had been dumped into the crankcase that the oil was diluted to the point of failure. He could put in terms Jestal would appreciate, as this guy is a Shell Oil lubrication engineer, no less!)

 

[FJRMGM]

---> He went on to say they drained about 8 qts. of gas/oil out of the crankcase (I do not know the normal capacity);

I'd say it was more likely a stuck fuel petcock or something that allowed fuel to run into the engine when stopped to get that much fuel in the oil. Whatever, it diluted the oil and caused failure.

I watched a show on HD and Porsche developing the V-Rod engine and man, they tortured that engine for HOURS..

 

[afterburn]

this whole story sounds like B.S. to me.. Filled the crankcase with fuel - not likely...

Agreed. If the crankcase can fill up with fuel, that means there is no or bad sealing between the piston and cylinder and normal ignition will blow burning fuel down the sides of the piston with all the nasty effects that will cause. The unburned fuel should just be blown out of the exhaust valve and destroy any catalyst converter if present, but not much more. Good pistons and pistonrings will not allow fuel to just run down into the crankcase.

 

[JimV]

this whole story sounds like B.S. to me.. Filled the crankcase with fuel - not likely...

Agreed. If the crankcase can fill up with fuel, that means there is no or bad sealing between the piston and cylinder and normal ignition will blow burning fuel down the sides of the piston with all the nasty effects that will cause. The unburned fuel should just be blown out of the exhaust valve and destroy any catalyst converter if present, but not much more. Good pistons and pistonrings will not allow fuel to just run down into the crankcase.

I sort of had the impression that the excessive amount of fuel in the cylinder had caused the rings to fail prematurely. You're basically washing the cylinder walls with solvent in this scenario. Sooner or later whatever thin film of lubricant is on the cylinder walls would fail increasing friction and burning up the rings, right? Once the rings are damaged, fuel would blow past them into the oil pan on the compression stroke. Then the diluted oil could cause the same problem in the other jug.

It sounds like the sort of wacky thing that could happen to any bike if you kept running it on a bad cylinder, it's a good thing that he bought the warranty. Although I'm also surprised that H-D didn't hassle him since it was basically abuse that exacerbated the problem. I'd think Yamaha would react poorly to that kind of claim as well.

Cheers,

Jim

 

[jestal]

Totally plausible story.

Piston rings are directional in operation. They are designed to scrape liquid off the cylinder walls on the down stroke....that is how oil is kept out of the combustion chamber. If an injector was dumping fuel into a dead cylinder for an extended period of time the cylinder would be relatively "cold" and the liquid fuel entering the cylinder would condense and accumulate on the cylinder walls. The piston rings would ride over the fuel on the upstroke (as they are designed to do) and then scrape the fuel into the crankcase on the downstroke (as they are designed to do...but normally they are scraping oil off the cylinder walls).

This phenomenon is illustrates why it is so hard on an engine to short trip it. On a cold start the same thing happens with a lot of the fuel entering the cylinder (enriched for cold start driveability) condensing on the cylinder wall and getting scraped into the crankcase. If you let the engine warm up so that the oil temp comes up the contamination is boiled off but in this case it apparently accumulated faster then it was eliminated.

Nothing to do with washing the walls down or wearing out the rings due to fuel. The rings were working fine doing what they are supposed to do.

How could anyone ride something with only two cylinders that was missing one cylinder entirely for long enough for that to happen? It had to be down to about 25% of it's normal power....

 

[TestPilot]

That's kind of interesting actually. I'm a Toyota mechanic. On our vehicles, the ECM not only fires the coils, but looks for a confirmation signal that the coil actually fired...something about counter-electromotive force. Anyway, if it doesn't get a confirmation signal after so many cycles, it will kill injection to that cylinder to avoid just that kinda thing. Not to mention saving the catalytic converter from certain meltdown. I guess that little software blurb isn't universal.

Let's not confuse HD with Japanese technology :yahoo: :yahoo: