All quiet on the home front ???

[beachcomber]

I always used to put grooves in the skirts of my race pistons - MY purpose was for oil retention / cooling. I did that ever since I stripped a Lacey Manx Norton engine I had and found the pistons so modified.

 

[Green199]

3 years away and I see its still all quiet on the home front!
Hope you've all faired well so far during the pandemic.

I've basically had my Honda CB in storage for the past 3 years as I haven't had the living arrangements for it - and over the past year have just been getting back to working on bikes.

I've had a daily rider '02 FZS600 that I rode year round since 2017 (through snow and all) and it was sitting in a bit of state at the start of the lockdown last year, so I spent the year tidying it up and making it a bit more 'exciting'...aka bringing out the sports side of the sports tourer.

The first pic below she's quite tidy but that was before I rode it for 2 years in all weathers (and kept it outside under a cover!)

I've also just started sorting an engine rebuild out on my brothers '86 XL600RMG. Got stuck in 3rd and when I tore it down the gearbox wasn't in the best nick, with a lot of the gears having hardening worn through and major pitting - so that's just been swapped out with a replacement jobby from eBay and the rebuild is now underway.

Not sure to what extent i'll fiddle with the bike once its running, but i'll probably put together a thread for both of them anyway.
Its good to be back!

 

[pidjones]

Welcome back! Hope the virus situation gets past all of us soon, but fear pockets of unvacinated populations will produce more variants (like the "Delta" - from India). Meanwhile, it appears some governments are slowly fine-tuning response to be both effective and less intrusive. I really like the side-fairing change on the FZR. Wondering what would cause such wear in a Honda gearbox? How many miles?

 

[Green199]

Welcome back! Hope the virus situation gets past all of us soon, but fear pockets of unvacinated populations will produce more variants (like the "Delta" - from India). Meanwhile, it appears some governments are slowly fine-tuning response to be both effective and less intrusive. I really like the side-fairing change on the FZR. Wondering what would cause such wear in a Honda gearbox? How many miles?

Cheers Pid.

Yep - looks like this shit is going to be around with us for a while!

Yeah the Fazer is looking much nicer with the fairings. They are aftermarket from Motoxpricambi, and the only fairings I found that actually look made for the bike rather than some dodgy bolt on...and that's including the OEM ones. That being said, for the amount I paid for them, the quality was SHOCKING and took a lot of hours of fettling and bodywork to get them in a 'decent' standard.
I'll put together a thread this weekend detailing that pain in the ass! haha

For the XL, i'm unsure on mileage but apparently they're prone to getting stuck in 2nd/3rd, and wearing out those 2 gears in particular due to the amount of time spent in them on the trails. It looks like we caught it in good time as everything else in the motor looked 'ok' and i'm sure it wouldn't have been long before this failed catastrophically....

 

[pidjones]

That's some serious high pressure damage. On the accel sides I assume. I don't think it is wear, more likely bad metal.

 

[Green199]

That's some serious high pressure damage. On the accel sides I assume. I don't think it is wear, more likely bad metal.

I think these were both on the countershaft from memory. The darker lines/mottled effect on the unaffacted gears in the top picture is the wear with the surface hardening all but gone, and then they had some extreme cavitation...possibly from lack of oil as that's another known problem with this dry sump motor.

I think there were 4 gears in total that had that cavitation/pitting, but those were the worst 2 and my eBay replacement gearbox luckily had those 4 in great condition. Sometimes you get lucky.

 

[teazer]

The "wear" is off to one side on both gears. Check for dog engagement and try to shim the replacements to be more central if possible.

 

[Green199]

Yeah, you're right Teazer.
The dogs looked ok on all gears, but I've got a feeling some of them were installed incorrectly (2nd gear can be inserted either way, with a chamfer on one side to allow it to seat further into next gear and get full dog engagement). From what I have read it can operate with them in backwards, but obviously isn't the best.

I had no reports from my brother about dodgy shifting until it got stuck in gear, but that was only after a few hours since he bought it.
I'll whack a thread up for it soon.