So I'm doing a 6K maintenance, which is the second time for me. Feeling confident because I've done it once before with no problems. Follow the OVAD (or at least I thought I did) after a couple hundred miles I notice that the thing is starting to make a lot of noise coming from the left side head. I begin to suspect I didn't get it right. Pull off the valve cover and to my shock I see that must have forgotten to tighten the nuts on the intake valves. One of them has backed off almost to the end of the valve adjuster and the other one..... well, it seems to have fallen off. So now I'm in panic mode. Crap, I figure I'll have to start tearing the head off to try and locate the damn nut. I figure what the hell, I'll try and see if I can't poke a magnet in there and maybe get lucky and retrive the errant nut. Well, for once, karma is on my side. After about 5 minutes of poking around I manage to fish out the nut. Took a good look at it and as far as I can tell it didn't come into any contact with any moving parts, at least there aren't any tell tale marks on it. So I readjust the intake valves which had backed out quite a bit as you can imagine. And button everything up and now I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Now the question is, did I do any damage to the motor? The intake valves backed out and I've always heard loose is better then tight, but maybe not REAL loose? I'm pretty sure the nut just fell into a recess and didn't cause any damage, or at least I sure as hell am hoping that's the case. So does anybody have any ideas on what potential is there for damage in that scenario?
The odds are in your favor, and I've seen worse in the shop, and no damage (or future problems) Those valves must have been ticking pretty loud! $.02 Paul
Probably Okay. There's probably nothing you can do now anyway, so might as well ride on and not worry about it. - Mark
Hell, if I were smart and not so broke I woulda fired myself a looooong time ago Those silly motors can survive a lot. Fish lost one of his nuts (I known, it explains a lot:eek1 ) inside the engine many thousand miles ago and it is still lost in there and the beast is still run'n
There is little chance of damage to the valve train due to the nut backing off... And since you managed to find said nut and have re-installed it, it poses no danger to the internals of your engine... I wouldn't worry about it... I would practice applying 8Nm of torque to those pesky lock nuts though... JJ
I think we're related I once dropped a shim down the cam chain tunnel on an oil cooled GSXR. Took the sump / oil pan off & couldn't find it. Ran it for 4,000 miles, drained the oil, removed oil pan, still couldn't find it until I looked on the magnetic drain plug & there it was Only a couple of mild scratches on it Albie - it's hard to learn things without making a mistake. I feel that mistakes can have a positive effect in that they're not easily forgotten
I suspect you didn't do any lasting harm, and you should notice a HUGE improvement in power and smoothness when you get your bike back togather. That's the kind of payoff that makes doing your own tune-up so rewarding.
