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Some of you know, most of you don't, in March of 2020, at around 15k miles my original engine in my 2010 developed a 4th gear pop-out issue. This was due to numerous misshifts from 3rd to 4th that progressively got more and more frequent to the point where it eventually rounded off the dogs to where it would no longer stay engaged, just pop in and out of gear repeatedly. This felt a lot like hesitation upon acceleration, kind of like the bike would stumble as if it was cutting spark/fuel, though it only happening in 4th gear was obviously a trans issue, not a spark/fuel issue. These bikes are not smart enough to know what gear they are in.
Just because I needed my bike up an running for an upcoming track day, rather than rebuild the original engine I found a good use 6k miles engine at a local dismantler, for an amazing price, and I ended up swapping this new engine in instead or the long and drawn out process of waiting on parts to rebuild the original engine. I was eventually planning on rebuildilding the original engine, but when your bike is running just fine you tend to lose motivation on doing so, and you instead spend your disposable income on more important stuff, like $1000 Arai helmets and $2800 D-Air suits... 🤣 To be fair, I didn't really expect this new engine to develop this same issue, at least not this soon. On this new engine, the gearbox was tighter than a nun's you know what, never really ever had a misshift, perfect gear changes always, easy to find neutral, this engine was behaving as any new bike. Until yesterday that is. Riding home from ACH, accelerating away from a stop sign, I felt the infamous hiccup after I shifted into 2nd gear. Surely this must be a loose chain skipping?!?! ...nope! Surely it happen in other gear too?!?! ...nope, only 2nd! Arrrggg.... here we go again!
Now, I don't think this engine has the same issue as my original engine. I do not recall ever having a massive gearbox crunch, from misshift or otherwise, for the dogs to get rounded off there would have had to be some crunch happening. Especially since 2nd gear is basically never, ever use on track. This bike has a very close ratio gearbox and final drive so anything below 3rd is only used for launching. I'm now kind of suspecting the shift fork pads are worn down (or possibly bent), and the only thing I could think of as causing this would be me constantly trying to shift into an imaginary 7th gear down the front straight at 11k RPMs at 140mph... At that kind of RPM's putting pressure on the shift forks would grind them down quite quickly. But I won't know for sure until I disassemble.
Speaking of which, that's not the engine we are disassembling today. I'm rebuilding my original engine, the one with the 4th gear issue. I've pulled the engine out of storage and cleaned it real good to avoid any contamination after the case is split. I decided to do the rebuild in my kitchen, because for one it;s 100*F outside and I need A/C, and also being in the desert we have a ton of dust floating around that I don't want to make it into my engine. I'm thinking of video'ing the process as this seems to be a relatively common occurrence with the z1k/n1k/v1k platforms, and while it's not a hard job there are steps and tips that need to be followed to do it right. Now I f'ing hate editing videos, so it might be a long and drawn out video, hopefully I can figure out how to speed up or cut out the boring bits, and once the engine is rebuilt I'll do another video on how to swap the engine in and out of the bike.
more to follow...
Just because I needed my bike up an running for an upcoming track day, rather than rebuild the original engine I found a good use 6k miles engine at a local dismantler, for an amazing price, and I ended up swapping this new engine in instead or the long and drawn out process of waiting on parts to rebuild the original engine. I was eventually planning on rebuildilding the original engine, but when your bike is running just fine you tend to lose motivation on doing so, and you instead spend your disposable income on more important stuff, like $1000 Arai helmets and $2800 D-Air suits... 🤣 To be fair, I didn't really expect this new engine to develop this same issue, at least not this soon. On this new engine, the gearbox was tighter than a nun's you know what, never really ever had a misshift, perfect gear changes always, easy to find neutral, this engine was behaving as any new bike. Until yesterday that is. Riding home from ACH, accelerating away from a stop sign, I felt the infamous hiccup after I shifted into 2nd gear. Surely this must be a loose chain skipping?!?! ...nope! Surely it happen in other gear too?!?! ...nope, only 2nd! Arrrggg.... here we go again!
Now, I don't think this engine has the same issue as my original engine. I do not recall ever having a massive gearbox crunch, from misshift or otherwise, for the dogs to get rounded off there would have had to be some crunch happening. Especially since 2nd gear is basically never, ever use on track. This bike has a very close ratio gearbox and final drive so anything below 3rd is only used for launching. I'm now kind of suspecting the shift fork pads are worn down (or possibly bent), and the only thing I could think of as causing this would be me constantly trying to shift into an imaginary 7th gear down the front straight at 11k RPMs at 140mph... At that kind of RPM's putting pressure on the shift forks would grind them down quite quickly. But I won't know for sure until I disassemble.
Speaking of which, that's not the engine we are disassembling today. I'm rebuilding my original engine, the one with the 4th gear issue. I've pulled the engine out of storage and cleaned it real good to avoid any contamination after the case is split. I decided to do the rebuild in my kitchen, because for one it;s 100*F outside and I need A/C, and also being in the desert we have a ton of dust floating around that I don't want to make it into my engine. I'm thinking of video'ing the process as this seems to be a relatively common occurrence with the z1k/n1k/v1k platforms, and while it's not a hard job there are steps and tips that need to be followed to do it right. Now I f'ing hate editing videos, so it might be a long and drawn out video, hopefully I can figure out how to speed up or cut out the boring bits, and once the engine is rebuilt I'll do another video on how to swap the engine in and out of the bike.
more to follow...