Correct me if I'm wrong...but...isn't that the pair valve up front on the first pic there?That would make that burnt piston,the #1 piston.Four is on the right side...yes?Okay...nevermind.

Just out of curiosity what octane were you running in your bike?

91

I think you might be under a [good will] warranty? Hard call, but I would not run that ECU again. My guess is a bad #4 leg. That means, each cylinder has it's own map. It can calc itself off. So for that to be in some sort of ignition advanced like really something strange, I'm surprised it did not hole itself?

Usually, the piston looks like it came out of a box, it is that steam cleaned off of carbon. This though, looks unusually metallic as in peppering the layer off like detonation only can. And that looks like a stage of det. Unless the compression is that high? I doubt it. I'll stick with steam cleaning and a bad ECU.

That, or a lean injector being the spray holes are clogged? Naaaaa. I'm back to detonation. If you come back and say the ring of the gasket has been burned off along with the 3 o'clock etching, I'm det and I'm powerful enough to lift the head off the cylinders. I can grow the head studs. I can C-bend a crank rod. I can pepper a hole in piston. I can collapse a dome; lock the rings in their groove.

I don’t know if you have ever ran fuel injector cleaner in your bike but I have to agree with Hub something is wrong with your fuel burn or that 3 o’clock hole was caused by your antifreeze getting in to that cylinder there but that doesn’t explain why the other cylinders are so dirty keep us up to date on this I NEED to know what caused this!

What dose the piston look like after its been cleaned. is it all in the poo or is there marks in the ally piston.

Whats the poo made of, what dose it feel like .

Are all 4 a bit the same way

coolant can do that to the top of a piston, but would have thought you would needed to of been adding over time to effect all 4, if the poo is in fact piston crown gunge up alloy, a piston in a former life, coolant enters in the down ward stroke detonates on the hot piston top and makes the alloy brittle and it crumbles. coolant gets low engine runs hot its a vicious circle

you found coolant in the air box that's still the main suspect, pistons have been sharing the leak during valve overlap or the rapidly expanding coolant [steam] shooting into the air box when the inlet valve opens, after hitting that hot piston.then condensate back again

hard to tell from the other side of the world

cross hatching looks good ,no lip from top ring ???

good luck dude

* Last updated by: ethin14 on 1/18/2012 @ 3:02 AM *

I'm really surprised no one has asked how your exhaust looked before you shut it down(maybe missed it). I had a GSXR that kept having head problems and I could tell IMEDIATELY there was something wrong because the exhaust would throw crap all over and the eventually the plugs would foul out too. Just brushing past the end of the pipe would leave a stain on my jeans every time.
Is that buildup in the cylinder crusty? Or can it be removed easily. If it were crunchy I'd say this is build up over a long period of time lending to crappy gas/lack of cleaning, or poor mixture (rich). If it was sludgey (I doubt) then it's a newer problem.
And even if it was the head. How the hell did coolant get in the airbox without some crappy running which you never had?

All in all I'd say have the pistons cleaned, reinstall everything with a new head gasket and adjust your mapping while keeping a close eye on the plugs and fluid consumption for the next ten thousand. A hand at the exhaust pipe every once in awhile never hurts and can tell a lot as well. (I kinda got into a habit after the Suzy). As long as no metal is missing things can be salvaged quite easily.

good luck

Thr " ridge" in the pics is just the cutouts for the valves. It looks to me that the bike was ridden too easy, led to build up of carbon. A good cleaning and a good romp thru the RPMs would do it good.

Mad

Hey Madd, that's what I've been told by a couple of others. I was thinking I would have to pull the engine, get the cylinders honed out, and possibly pistons cleaned up, maybe new rings, maybe new pistons. So I asked a mechanic I know who is the head mechanic at a Kawi dealership. I wanted his opinion on it, and see if he could recomend an engine machine shop. My mechanic told me I just needed to clean it up before I put it back together. He said it is completely normal. He said he sees this in engines with 10 thousand miles on them all the time. And he told me I have to ride it harder- it's the first time I've ever been accused of not ridding hard enough- I consider that good news. And he recomended a couple of products. One is just a engine cleaner- which seems good- maybe better than competitors, the other is Yamaha Combustion Chamber Cleaner. This you spray into the stacks while the engine is running. He says that he went on a training course where they tested a bunch of similar products, and that the Yamaha was significantly better than any other product. After talking to him, I went to a machine shop that he recomends, and they told me basically the same thing- that it was pretty normal and that it just needed some cleaning up. They both said that it is from fuel additives and ethanol in todays fuels. But if this is normal, and my mechanic sees it in pretty much every engine he opens up- some with a lot less miles than my bike- that means that the inside of your engine most likely looks the same. The first clue I had was when I removed the gas tank and opened up the air box, took a flashlight and looked down the stacks to the valves. I could see little rust colored specks on the tops of the valves. I've just started cleaning up the head (the rest of the engine is out in the garage, where it's been -30 degrees for the past several days), and the thickest bits of that crud, I can pick off with my thumb nail. Below that, the stuff that's baked right on, I've been using the engine cleaner, and trying a Dremel tool with various bits, and 400 grit sand paper. The Dremel bits were either too agressive or not agressive enough. The sand paper worked well on the flat surfaces. But the head is the easy part. The piston tops and the cylinders will be tougher and more critical, so I will have to find some other method- something that will clean it up, but not scrape up the cylinders- perhaps some kind of fabric or leather polishing attachment for a drill. I'll be experimenting this weekend. And once I have it back together, use the Combustion Chamber Cleaner. Oh, and follow Cooter's advice, and use some injector cleaner.

* Last updated by: CanTour on 1/19/2012 @ 10:26 PM *

This is a job for Vinny-Gear! Takes rust out with a wipe of a wet vinny just about. Then, take plain old cheap coke or root beer soda, pour it over the vinny so it won't turn color... if you care about some color. Then, wash it off with water instead. The oil comes to the top of the vinny.

The carbon comes right off the valves too. No one listens to turtle.

No grinders to head surfaces. No sanding the piston domes. Dip ~ Dip ~ Dip... You can't get any cleaner, yes?

Hey Hub, those are the tips I appreciate! Thanks.

Actually I did find some brushes for the drill that are working well. They are long vinyl bristles. They take all the hard carboned crap off and dont mark the metal.

Also Hub, what do you use for a valve spring compressor? The Kawi special tool? or some generic compressor?

I've moved the reassembly indoors. The five days of -30 degree temperature finally broke me.

CanTour; Fancy workbench ya got there!

I use a non-fancy Honda Issue valve spring tool. Has a special two piece valve retainer kind of lays over any valve retainer. The C-clamp design has the lower part of the C that sits in the middle of the valve face. Here, you see the collars you use for the correct spring retainer head needed to secure the one side of the valve system. The other side touches the valve face. This is your generic valve spring remover/installer tool.

OK, I went out and bought a cheap valve spring compressor. I've removed a couple of valves. But I don't get how to remove the oil seal and spring seat- and the manual doesn't seem to say anything about it.

The seal is a throwaway. You'll need to buy 16 new ones. I lick the underside and press it on by hand. To remove, I take a screwdriver flat, slip it under the seal. The deal here is, you can't damage the bucket hole. You lay leverage on that round, the bucket does not slip in, you collapsed the tool on the machined part? Think like that.

That means, you twist that sping tool down, it gouges the bucket wall... Plus, I know how Honda uses two different bucket sizes for intake/exhaust; on a certain bike. All this mismatching should be in check, I don't need to explain how critical the teardown is and who came out of where? Even if the book says squat, this is still the mantra.

Wear as, you can take safety wire, make a tool to hook the loop around the bottom of the seal, then bottle cap it off by pulling up on the loop. I can see it working, you damage nothing with that kind of leverage.

Before the cleaning.

After

Before

After

The tools I used.
The Dremel attachements that I had were either to aggresive, or not aggressive enough. So I went out shopping and found this one. It worked great, though they didn't last too long (one per piston). And the nylon brushes (which in a previous post, I called vinyl) worked very well as a first line of attack, to get the bulk of the crud off. It grinds away at the crud, but doesn't scratch up the metal. And after all the work I put it through, the brush looks as good as brand new (It's a great discovery, that I'm sure will also work great for stripping paint or cleaning up the transmission in the truck or whatever).
I experimented with several different cleaning agents, with little success. Then I tried lacquer thinner. It worked great. And being a carpenter, I should have tried it first. The build up on top of the pistons was baked on quite hard, so the lacquer thinner was only somewhat effective on it. There, I scraped, then used the nylon brush, then finished it up with the Dremel tool. But on the ring around the cylinders, above the travel of the rings, the lacquer thinner worked great. As a matter of fact, I didn't use any grinding there- just the lacquer thinner and a rag. Which was good- I was a little leary about grinding away at the cylinders.

* Last updated by: CanTour on 1/22/2012 @ 9:24 PM *

Look at your spiral lines. You bottle brush that finish, it will look like that piston dome. Leave the cylinders alone. If you want to decarbon the top of the barrel, use a new straight edge blade to it. Try not to gouge the cross hatch. Just go deep enough to clean the carbon ring where the piston ring stops, obviously.

Then, take compressed air and blow that crap out between the barrel and side of the piston dome. You clog that area, the pressurized air cannot walk down behind the ring, push it out to seal it.

It's all a fun learning experience for me.

Good attitude. I feel the same way about my bike. It makes me anxious to ride having the bike out of service day in and day out but it is a great learning experience. Thanks for the pics and explanaitions CanTour.

Was it pure coolant in the airbox? If the "stuff" in the airbox looked like a sludgey jell, that may have been oil mixed with condensation. I have seen pics of that on the 14 before.

Motor looks nice, BTW.

If you want to get the spring seats out, use a thin magnet. Run it around the spring seat until the oil film lets go and it will lift out.

Mad