Hokey dokey - I know that some of you are waiting with baited breath for the latest on that sexy, but troublesome, old bat - Lucille
- so without further adieu, here it is.
I went out to the DCW at about 5:00 AM this morning because RobinC, the XS650 Forum’s Champion Polisher was coming to help me remove Lucille’s engine and he is a fastidious guy. I simply had to bring a little law and order (ooops - no politics, sorry, my bad
) to my shop before he arrived at about 9:00AM. She was nearly ready except for the last few engine mount bolts - so after a decent clean-up, everything seemed set. Robin turned up just a bit early and after a short preliminary on the engine mounts, we hooked up his two big bars and the straps that secure them to the front and rear engine mounts, and simply lifted the engine out and onto the floor. The entire “lifting out” operation took perhaps 2-3 minutes.
After that, I rolled Lucille’s, now svelte, carcass away and we muscled the engine up onto my work bench.
By this point, it was around 9:25 AM and Robin had been here for maybe 30 minutes (which included some coffee etc.) - so once you get things unbuttoned, it doesn’t take long. I don’t have an engine stand - and so we had simply plopped the lump up on my bench and propped it up with a 2x4 under the front case...and so, the Ontario Division of the ERG Engine Removal Team has completed the task.
At this point, Robin (right in the above photos) suggested we ought to pull the head off and see what was what, so...we did. As many of you will know, disassembling an XS650 top end is a fairly fast process and so, in around 10 minutes, we had removed the cam cover. To my great relief, the camshaft and the four rockers all appear to be in excellent condition - as were all of the valve springs from what we could see. Sooo, what was the cause of that mysterious new engine noise?
We next removed Lucille’s head (not that kind of head and no, not that other kind of head either
). Upon flipping the head over, we noted that while there is a bit of carbon here and there, the piston crowns, combustion chambers and valves all look pretty good.
In fact, everything looked pretty good, until we saw this....
....and this....
And so now we know the cause of the noise. It was the timing chain slapping into the bare metal of the completely nude front cam chain guide. We also know the reason for the crappy looking black oil and all of the metallic and plastic bits in it...that was the debris from the cam chain guide being rubbed and beaten up by the timing chain. There was one portion of the cam chain guide shoe still in one piece, but wasn’t actually attached to the metallic guide rail - and so it sure wasn’t doing much good just flapping around in the space between the cylinders.
Anyhow, it’s a darned good thing that the NOS guide I found online the other day was just delivered to my US mailing address about 15 minutes ago!
...more to follow....and MANY THANKS to Robin - a true friend and an excellent member of our XS650 community.
Cheers,
Pete
