XJ650 Strip. Clean. Build.

Alright so i bought this bike back in 2012, pulled it out of a hilbilly area in Maryland for a few bucks.
right off the bat minor repairs were done to make the bike drive-able just so i can see all the problems with it on the road, i drove it for about 3 months, then i stored it in the shed cause life happened and didnt touch it again(left to universtiy and had other side projects) till recently. So join me on this adventure

 

I like that oversized engine guard/ front peg support. Would look great on a touring setup

 

the PO mostly used it to tour the USA so it has around 41,xxx miles on it

 

My methods maybe a bit un-orthodox but hey it does the job

 

i took this engine too my university and showed the younger (less experienced) classmates how a transmission and engine work so they would have a better understanding and some thing they can relate to rather then just going off of picture that they see in the textbooks or video demonstrations. When a few of my buddies and i pulled it apart well i instantly saw all my problems i had with this bike, why it was overheating, why it was smelling like burnt oil, why it lacked power and why the gears were slipping. Here is what we uncovered

 

once we got the top half part of the engine off, you could see all the dirt and gunk that was built up in this transmission and oil wells. if you take a careful look in the last picture the bearing that hold the transmission (with the black seal over it) is cracked and indented. i wasn't to happy to find this almost as if someone tried to tinker with the shifter and damaged the bearing. looking in where the counterweights rotate about i found gooey oil mixed with sand or some other type of grains not a good sight, the journals how ever were in good condition only one if the journals had a small groove that was almost not noticeable, none the less i'm glad the grains didn't travel through and scratch them up badly.

 

These next couple of pictures are just so you can see how bad it was and what i was up against with a compressor, a gallon of mineral spirits, soft brush, coffee filters, 800 grit sand paper and a few razor blades

 

almost done with the dirty pictures, bear with me ....

 

remember this picture? you probably cringed your nose and looked with disgust, i did the same thing because this oil was so gooey and sludgy like someone with thick dense mucus during a cold who has trouble breathing. Could you imagine right now trying to breath through your nose in that kind of situation?! well thats what this poor engine was doing

 

so i started looking around what was causing this oil to be so thick. My first thought was if this oil is in the pan, then that could only mean the pump was pumping this oil through the system. So i started with the oil pump first and sure enough my instinct was correct. I shot some compressed air into the pump from reverse and my face was covered in oil and some red rubbery chunks. At first i was confused not by the oil but by the red chunks, because i was clueless as to what it was and where it came from, i had noticed it initially while dismantling the engine, but didn't put much thought into it... i started slowly again with the air, then took some filler rod and started slowly and carefully pulling gunk out from in between the mesh and cover. There was so much of it!! This is where i had a "AAAHHHHH" moment. it dawned upon me that this was the makeshift RTV stuff. In the last picture you can see how much of it i manage to pull out (that was all of it).

 

I took a step back and started thinking how did RTV get into the oil pump? I managed to remember that when i initially got the bike, the PO used clear caulking silicon for the intake boots to patch up the cracks in them and they had used RTV to make the head gasket and went around the front and into the bolts with extra white silicon. They must've never let the RTV properly cure and used an excessive amount and it got sucked in wiht the oil and traveled around untill it ended up in the pump. Clogging it up, forcing the oil pressure to drop, engine to over heat, and the oil to bake and get stuck to the oil pan and become so sludgy, despite my flushing.

See when i got the bike that was the first thing i did, change it to a proper yamaha gasket, proper yamaha (new) intake boots, cleaned carbs, spark plugs, air filter, changed the oil filter, flushed oil through the system 2 times before actually filling it up with oil permanently. Because the owner admitted that the bike was sitting for 5 years under a cover outside since the last time it was driven. After a basic service i filled up the tank and added fuel cleaner and let the bike idle for about an hour and took it for a test drive (it was rather cold that day i remember wearing layers of clothing and still being cold (end of October 2012)) thats when i discovered my 2nd gear problem but must've missed the engine heat that day because it was cold outside...........................Anyways that's why i was lost for a moment when i ended up with oil and RTV on my face because i had no idea of it, but i'm glad i didn't continue driving the bike and make it worse.

{please excuse any spelling/grammatical errors english isn't my first language}

 

Great pics, and it seems like a fun adventure you had figuring that out haha

 

What language do they speak in Philly? I know Pittsburgh has its own language (greazy, slippy, younz). People say that us folks on the North coast sound like Canooks, for sure eh.
What university are you going to that lets you tear down motors and work on them? I want to go there.

 

well in philly it's often said that we speak slang, ghetto, and a lot of people have the philly accent. Philly accent is something like "yous" "wooter (water)" "iggles (Eagles)"
The most important thing to remember is that the word "jawn" (j-a-own) can mean anything and can substitute anything.
ex. "yo pass me the jawn sitting right there in the corner" "which jawn you talking bout this one or that one"
Newcomers to philly are always asking who is john? Where is this john, i've never met him!?

i go to Temple University. We as a student body are involved in many SAE programs, and the one i'm in is SAE Formula F1. We have to build a F1 car (No not full sized, there are many rules/restrictions and guidelines by which it has to be designed) The engine allowed for the competition is a 600cc (possibly 650) so i brought my xj650j to show those that are redesigning the transmission how it works internally.
Actually now that i think about it Philly universities are all pretty big on this international competition!


Excuse the improper typing/grammar i believe at this point i'm just to lazy to type properly

 

For the most part i am almost done cleaning everything, i need to find one last part for the transmission... the infamous "not-in-production" bearing with a seal.....

Bearing (83A581a)
93306-30425-00

all i really need in all honestly is just the seal which was cracked, the bearing itself is pretty fine. Unless YOU XJ'ers think otherwise, would it hurt me if i was just to get a new seal rather then a brand new bearing?

 

Looks SOOOO much better after your job

 

Looking good man!!

 

That was some crazy tear down. How long did it take you to put the motor back together. Looking to do the same on my xj750.