Been enjoying my 14R and was just wondering,what is the "expected" life of the bikes engine?Ive seen Gold wings with 150k+ and had a man tell me his buddy's Honda valkyrie has over 400K on it.I know the Valkyrie(sp?) is six cylinder but still that's a LOT of miles.I also know these sport bikes run at higher rpms than cruiser bikes so I'm just curious as what I can expect from normal riding with the ever so often "childish" behavior stunts a 50yr old kid is bound to do at times?

Maintainace + maintance + maintance = forever

+1
I have an 82 Yamaha Maxim that does need some attention (sat for a while), but I also have an 02 VTX 1800 that is still a beast of a cruiser running strong.

Then there is the 14, that needs no introduction ;)

1. Metallurgy:
When Honda would produce bikes back in the day, it wasn't the oil, but the heat treating and the general process of making metal move over another metal part. The metal goes soft, the galling or ripping off of the surface of the machined finish would burn out or cause this galling and make the engine somewhat noisy. Today's metals can withstand that galling. That's one part of longevity to one of these.

2. Air cleaner:
Those aftermarket air cleaners are engine killers. The finer grit that the OEM filter could catch is cutting cylinder wall finishes. This can be caught between the ring or piston skirt and when the piston goes up and down, so will a line in the cylinder wall finish. That line is more like a farm water channel to feed the fields. So there is this troth of oil that is about to be washed out by the fuel, burned with the fuel and so on = Car smokes all the time down the road. If you added up all the gall lines in the cylinder and made one wide troth, there is air escaping down those lines that cause less compression and shorten the engine life. Compression is paramount to extend more miles out of the engine.

The valve is next. Say the debris had a chance to gall in the small marble category. Now come the big boys that do not go past the piston but are crushed on the valve closing. So here is a rock [call it] that keeps the valve off its seat for a split or is hammered into dust the first time, causes a sealing problem between the two surface contacts. These divots are being peppered thru the years of mileage = neglect of servicing the air cleaner element, etc. So now there is the valve seat finish to contend with as with the galling of the walls. See how important it is to stay on top of the air cleaner maintenance by cutting the replacement interval in half? The cleaner the engine, the longer it lives.

3. Oil:
It does not matter the weight, brand, mix if syn to plain old oil out the can. It is when you change it is key. So that galling stone that took out the wall is now in the crankcase about to wipe a soft crank insert. The galling of the cam towers in the head take a wipe of 360 degrees before the oil gap and/or the pressure dislodges the contaminant so there is less metal damage to the rolling internals. A hot oil change is to have the debris suspended in the oil so it does not settle and be sucked in again thru the oil pump and gall those blades too.

So when Cornelius says 'maintenance,' he means to stay on top of the 2 killers of an engine. The metallurgy has improved, but the owner and maintenance is more the killer of an engine these days. Can't blame the owner who logs over 100k or did he break 200k on a 14 engine? Well if not, then he's about to keep going from 100k on. So how long can you keep the bike going? Over 100k has been documented on a 14.

He's around. Maybe he'll tell you his secrets. Probably the same thing I'm saying, because you'll never hammer it every mile so that is a mute point really. So send it to the barn wet if you like. Changing oil makes the trans shift better, then goes south about 2,700 miles or so? Your foot may vary. Once you feel that difference, change it. My average oil change was around 2,700 miles on average. 300 short of book(?) is about where you want to be as far as keeping the oil clean. The sooner the better. If the owner's manual says 12k is new air cleaner time, you cut that 12k back some to around 8-9 or cut the book in half and change it at 6k.

So my line would be saying: Change + Clean + Change = Forever

Thank you for the info gentlemen and I appreciate that very detailed reply Hub.This helps put my mind at ease about when the miles start adding up.I kinda know what to expect from cars,cruiser bikes and things to look for and what to expect from heavy equipment but knew nothing much about sport bikes.I also know keeping them serviced is the life of them and good to know I've got a lot of riding ahead of me in the future with my n1k and especially my 14r.Taking the 14 up the road here shortly (sorry for you fellows up north in the cold lol).Thanks for replying..

So far 54k on mine, still runs like new...

Mad

Hub is exactly on this....good stuff....thanks again for the reminder(s);)

Anytime, fellas and ladies. This kind of stuff keeps me from forgetting myself. On the ground [lawnmower] or in the air, [plane] this is engineric. So any gas/diesel engine applies, even an air compressor, or tire pump: anything that needs to be compressed is to keep it sealing, i.e., no score marks WOTsoever.

Good stuff Hub, as always, I do all of what you said, the only thing I am concerned about, is the ECU flashes, I wasn't there when they did mine, and am a little new to flashes, gonna have C look at mine and reflash when funds allow ....

the only thing I am concerned about, is the ECU flashes...

Thanks, car, but I too am new to flash and mapping. Here is the concern... I don't think there is any? I can only go what I read from the factory info from the kit-ECU, where this hands on mapping does something to the chip. That's what I'm studying about are the hard parts.

It seems that the race kit ECU has the chipability, the burnability, or flashability to change the ign/fuel/gpc/vac numbers being in a race environment, you can do this to the chip 65,000 times... So says the Kawi kit-ECU.

I don't think once or twice is going to hurt the chip wrinkle 2 times vs. 65,008 bottles of beers on the wall left to go? Sing it wit me. Unless... UNLESS... by the time I figure out and read about 5 entry level books on circuit boards, I think I could figure out who and where she sits, drill out a square; heat it out of the board and replace it with a new chip and the beers are on the wall again: sing it wit me.

What little I've read about the chip is that she is a crystal? DFI? Digital crystal? So there are so many cracks that line up like grab a bag of rice, squeeze and hold? They just sit and line back up again. So if you kept on squeezing and rubbing grain enough, the rice in that bag, she turns to powder, yes? For argument sake say, you entered Hubsville and your brain has just been flashed...

Now look at that resistance number getting from the bottom of the bag to the top is pick a number from 0 to 5. All those clicks have to touch one powder against another grain of powder. Wasn't traveling up/across/down/sideways clicking off a rice grain a lot faster? Less grain to travel thru? Wouldn't there be more on/off clicks going thru the powder grain than a whole rice grain in the bag? Was that crystal clear or watt, electrically speaking? Sound logical to explain a chip flashed so much it eventually [the crystals] no longer line up and can travel thru the rest of the crystal> going south with too many flashes too much resistance out of spec sending a high resistance... Electrically speakingeneric?

Lo Resistance = Bag of rice ~ go squeeze. How fast did you make that hourglass in the middle of the bag so both fingers make contact with the plastic between the rice she goes so smooth in the linear from 0 to 5v, or I can say that bag of rice is an on off switch. Every grain [still] touched so the truth tables matched this end of the rice grain ending up to this next body of grain. They never jumped into the air gap of the bag say.

Hi Resistance = 25lb. bag of flour - go squeeze. If say you start with an air gap at the bag of flour, that is clean air before you press the bag in the middle. You make a cloud of flour in the air pocket, that did not start out as every molecule in place to travel to the surface of the air gap, or say from 0 to 5, say. No rice grain was in the air as a second resistance to try and bang off of, so it is out of spec twice in a way, say.

We catching the flashing of a rice grain to dustheory? You have now left Hubstown.

* Last updated by: Hub on 1/15/2014 @ 4:45 PM *