My Weekend With the XS....Read if you want a good laugh.

[JP50515]

Hey guys....just need to vent for a minute here to some people who understand.

I will start by saying, Thursday I pulled the bike out of storage for the winter and started summerizing it.

Friday, I put a new clutch in and new carbs on, because it was slipping at the end of last season and my bs28's are corroded like a mofo. It initially still slipped, but after the plates soaked over night, worked itself out. Besides that a screw driver slipped on me, and impaled my hand so deep that I damaged the tendons running to my middle and pointer finger, luckily grandpa was in town (an ex paramedic) and he stitched me up.

So a few hours later i decided to do a test run with the new clutch (i knew they would be but...) the carbs were jumping all over the place on the rpm spectrum and being finicky and generally uncooperative....and leaking gas from the "T" joint that splits the gas between carbs. I just wanted to get one run in to see if the clutch had been fixed so I cleaned off the bike and shoved some paper towel up in the carbs lol. Well I get going down the road and all of a sudden I hear WUUUPAAAHHAHAHA and then my exhaust was suddenly louder.....looked down and.....see ya muffler... the damn thing was tumbling down the road behind me as though to say "Oh your clutch still slips? Your carbs are leaking?....meh might as well bail on you too then!"

So I go back, get the muffler, and weld the sucker on today. Well i finally get every thing all tied up and decide to ride up to my shop to get my feeler gauges so i can do a valve adjustment tomorrow.....worst decision I made all weekend.

On the way there the highway speed is 65MPH....so i'm cruisin along when for some reason I decide to look at my rear tire just out of instinct. Sure enough I see my axle slowly spinning its way out of the rear rim! I immediately start praying, and pull over....luckily the nut was still on the other end, holding on by 2 threads. I always have some tools, so I was able to get it pretty snug, but not comfortably tight, and then stole the front axle's cotter pin to make sure that sucker wasn't gonna come out. I figured I could see the front axle if that one was gonna come loose on me.

My destination was about a half hour away and as I pull off the highway onto the shop's road I look down at my engine to make sure the carb leak hadn't come back....to my surprise the thing was COVERED in oil....and my first thought was NOOO the head gasket must have gone!


....wrong.

I drive the 2 blocks left to my shop and immediately shut the bike off. What I found, was my cam chain adjuster had somehow unthreaded the entire way out of the engine and was just sitting half in, half out while oil was shooting out of that hole. Checked the oil and it was luckily still in the safe zone, so all I hope really happened was the thing ran for a few blocks with a loose cam chain.

As i'm wiping the bike down some old lady sneaks up behind me and in a squawking kinda yelp yells "HEY!" from about two feet behind me and scares the bajeezus out of me. I jumped nearly out of my skin, bump the bike and down she goes....broken brake lever....

Then my buddy comes with my trailer and we discover that my bike is too low to roll right onto it....so we proceed to try and pick it up and get it over the hump....well he apparently cannot lift much and we pulled off and streched out the kickstand spring in the process...now that's junk too.



All in all i'd chalk this weekend up to an epic failure...but....i'm not dead.... and my engine didn't seize up on me...on top of that my clutch spacers I made worked perfectly, the new plates fixed themselves and the bike (for the few hours it was) wass running better than it ever has.

I'm not sure if this is my bike's way of punishing me for living in MN and keeping her locked up all winter or what....but right now i'm just gonna step back...have a beer and just let my brain think about all of this for a bit before doing anything....

But lets just say this bike is getting a complete look over before it leaves the garage again!



This has been one of those weekends where there's really nothing left to do but laugh at it.

 

[scabber]

Shit happens. I guess you will put on your spring start up procedure to tighten all the shit that vibrated loose last summer.

 

[JP50515]

I think I need a gallon jug of locktite ha

 

[Johnt3]

Holy crap man! You've been a busy man. Yeah, take a break and chill.
I'll be sure to remember your pain when I bolt mine back together.....

 

[JP50515]

Ha...yeah man....when I finally got it home, I readjusted the cam chain.....which I found was the culprit for the noise I thought was my valves all along (different thread). So in the end I chased my two biggest gremlins out of the bike... my clutch and the engine noise I was hearing....and really took no casualties in the process, just some bumps and bruises.....

I dont know.... in a strange figurative kind of way, this weekend has been kinda like life in general.....

A bunch of shit happens to you...but as long as you keep the end goal in sight and don't freak out....odds are you'll get there in one piece and better off than how you started.

how the bike sits now....is technically better than I think its ever been ha.....just been a major pain in the ass for the last two days to get there.

 

[Dusty]

The old saying,"if it aint broke,don't fix it" or as someone else on here says," if it aint broke,fix it 'till it is"!!!!

 

[JP50515]

Yeah lol... This one was broken tho ha.

 

[peanut]

wow what a tale of woe ! you must have been having one of those triple biorythm days

Your experience has galvanised me into to triple checking everything on my bike before I ride it for the first time.

I'd have decked that old lady though.

 

[cra-z1]

Kinda early to get it out up here in MN. It hardly got to 42 degrees. Still a shit load of sand and salt on the roads. Looks like a desert out there. I will wait a little longer.

 

[EvenmoreXS]

" All in all i'd chalk this weekend up to an epic failure...but....i'm not dead.... and my engine didn't seize up on me...on top of that my clutch spacers I made worked perfectly, the new plates fixed themselves and the bike (for the few hours it was) wass running better than it ever has. "

Sounds like your lucky day to me. Buy a lottery ticket. Just dont ride to the store.

 

[JP50515]

Yeah there's a lot of salt left, but I wasn't the only one catchin an early ride ha. Plenty of other bikes on the road this last week.

Anyway I want to get an understanding of the possible damage cause by this mishap, so if someone doesn't mind reading my understanding of how oil travels through our engine and correcting me if i'm wrong that would be great.

My understanding is that the oil starts its journey at the sump/crank, then travels upward to the valves via the oil passage tube on the front of the engine. Then travels back down through the side filter into the clutch case, and then back into the sump/crank.

I assume the cam chain is lubed simply by passing through the pooled oil in the crank case as it rotates around.

Again correct me if i'm mistaken.


So....in theory.... assuming this actually IS how the oil is distributed, and since the engine never operated at an oil level below the marked safe zone...Hopefully all that happened was that it ran for a few blocks with a completely loose cam chain. (which is brand new)

So my big question here is what should I be looking for to make sure it did not jump a tooth or cause any internal damage to the engine?

I ran and rode the bike after adjusting the cam chain adjuster back in and realized that, what I had presumed was a "valve" noise that I had been hearing at the end of last season and earlier this week was actually the chain after all. So one gremlin down. The bike actually sounded fine and ran fine, I just want to somehow verify if possible the extent of damage, if any, caused by this mishap.

I would assume that if the chain had jumped a tooth that it would not fire properly, so I don't think that happened.

I will re-re-adjust the cam chain tension, check the valves, and reset the timing this week.

Anything else you guys would be looking at to verify that the engine is indeed safe to operate?

Thanks again.

 

[JP50515]

Bump for possible answer

 

[scabber]

Set the engine at TDC the locating pin for the advance should be 12 o'clock one way to tell. It will run like crap if it is a tooth off.

 

[JP50515]

ah-ha. There is is! Thanks Scabber. I'll check it out. I doubt it jumped though it seems to be running just fine.

 

[deadchef]

here is a vid of how my bike ran with the cam chain off a tooth or two. my locating pin on the advance was at about 1 o'clock.

it would start and idle but couldn't get the rpm much past 5k.

 

[VosaME]

The oil path is close but just slightly different...it goes:

Oil sump screen, oil pump, paper side filter, then it is split and goes to the head feed tube (the one on the front of the engine) and to the transmission. It all returns to the sump by working its way down through various passages. This way all of the oil being supplied has been filtered twice and should be cleanest...

 

[JP50515]

Was I correct in how the cam chain is lubed?

 

[VosaME]

Yes, as far as i understand it the cam chain and its sprockets are just lubed by splash oil. I do not recall a passage that sprays it or otherwise directs oil to it.