Dual-sporting a 2010 TE 450, with cheap tricks

Well, I pulled the cams and found ALL 4 head bolts a little loose, had to turn all 4 a full turn or more to get 27.5 lbs plus 90 degrees. I am gonna button this baby up tomorrow and see if that cures it.

Hopefully things seal up. A good reminder for us all to re-torgue once in a while.

Tightening the head bolts didnt fix it, still will not start after being hot and then being shut off for 5 minutes to even overnight EXCEPT if I take the rad cap off when hot, then it will start after 5-10, 15, 30 minutes, an hour, and overnight. WEIRD

Thread on my water problem here:
http://www.cafehusky.com/threads/th...pe-thought-i-had-head-gasket-leak-nope.30541/

Bike ran great all weekend, dual sport rides on Sat and Sunday, at stops, I either let it idle, or I killed the bike and loosened the rad cap, bike started up fine every time. One of my buds make a great video on Sunday, we had a GasGas 450, an EXC 500, a CRF450 and my TE450, we had an awesome time!

Link to cam timing issue after install of a thicker head gasket:
http://www.cafehusky.com/threads/re...m-now-bike-wont-idle.30794/page-2#post-283464

Well, after a tight single track ride Sunday, Feb 17, where the TE450 just died on me during a really slow, lotsa hot clutch action section, and was a little slow to start back up, I decided I needed to get to the bottom of this problem (rad water in the combustion chamber) even if it meant pulling the head gasket for no reason, maybe I had a cracked head or cylinder jacket, just didn't know what the problem really was. I got the head off Sunday afternoon after I left the ride a little early. The head had a little carboning but not as much as I thought. There was no "trail" or break in the ring of the combustion chamber evident on the head, I cleaned it up a little and moved on to look at the piston.




I thought I saw some discoloration where the arrow is, couldn't be sure. On the top of the cylinder, there was no break in the faint ring that was the combustion chamber seal. I cleaned up the piston a little and moved on to the old gasket.




Of course, on the bottom and top of the gasket, the story was the same as the head and the cylinder, I saw no evidence of a real break or trail leading from the water chamber to the combustion chamber. Then I cut one of the rivets to look at the inner gasket. That's when I saw it, my wife happened to come thru the garage on her way to yoga and even she could see the "break" in the ring.





In between one of the coated outer gaskets and the uncoated inner gasket was clear evidence of water breaking thru the ring of the combustion chamber seal.


I flipped the set over to look at the corresponding spot on the coated outer gasket and the break could be seen there as well.


The position of this break corresponds to the slight discoloration I noticed on the piston (see pic 2).

I am really pumped that there was evidence of a leaking head gasket, not really "blown" but not sealing perfect enough for reliable starts after shutting the bike off. I hope to have it back together Tuesday. I pulled the head in-frame by pulling the cylinder studs, total time to replace the gasket will end up being about 9 hours, cause I'm old and slow and I have to keep stopping to put bandaids on my bloody knuckles!

this is good, mystery resolved. Good on you, and thank you for your great information in this thread. Now I only wish I had your mechanical skills- yet I hope I won't be needing them!

Be super super careful when putting the head and valve cover back on. That alloy is really soft. I just checked and adjusted my valve clearances and stripped all four valve cover threads by FINGER TIGHTENING them. Keep some M6 helicoils handy.

You jinxed me, man, I had to helicoil my second red cover anchor in one of the cam caps, good thing I had my kit handy, those kinds of things always make my repair times creep upwards, maybe I like being in the garage.....

Much time spent on the major headache of the thicker head gasket and cam timing, see the thread here if you didn't already. I DID learn alot which always a good takeaway.
http://www.cafehusky.com/threads/re...gasket-with-a-1-2mm-now-bike-wont-idle.30794/

Spending some time on tidy up chores now, first up, $13 for a new compression release cable, my old one was gonna give up any day now, since I use it on almost every start , elec or kick. I broke the adjuster down near the head long ago, since I am always too lazy to disconnect it when I do a valve check/adjust.



The head gasket job was the first time the headers have been off the bike in the 2 years I've been riding it, so I took the time to get the baked on mud off them.

It appears there is detonation on the piston crown in the picture posted.. Were you forced to run low octane at some time during one of your rides?

When I was having knock last summer, in very hot temps, I started using octane booster. The bike may have been knocking and me not know it for some time. Also, this past couple of months, when I thought I was getting water in premium gas, I switched to regular and thought I was always putting in enough octane booster but I may has not gotten enough in. I cleaned the piston top up a bit, there was no metal bits or permanent scars, just gooey carbon stuff.

How can you tell? I have only seen my piston through the spark plug hole but looks similar to ohr's I the amount of carbony goo.

Maybe a tad unconventional but I was concerned of the helicoil spinning. I used an M5 helicoil in the existing hole and resized the bolt thread size down. It now holds very well and seems robust.

WHAT IS DETONATION?
Detonation (also called "spark knock") is an erratic form of combustion that can cause head gasket failure as well as other engine damage. Detonation occurs when excessive heat and pressure in the combustion chamber cause the air/fuel mixture to autoignite. This produces multiple flame fronts within the combustion chamber instead of a single flame kernel. When these multiple flames collide, they do so with explosive force that produces a sudden rise in cylinder pressure accompanied by a sharp metallic pinging or knocking noise. The hammer-like shock waves created by detonation subject the head gasket, piston, rings, spark plug and rod bearings to severe overloading.
Mild or occasional detonation can occur in almost any engine and usually causes no harm. But prolonged or heavy detonation can be very damaging. So if you hear knocking or pinging when accelerating or lugging your engine, you probably have a detonation problem.

Cool. But how can you tell from ohr's piston?

Here is a bigger pic of the piston crown before cleaning. The whitish spots may look like bits of metal bit but they weren't. It was all gooey and alot of it scraped off easily with a credit card and a plastic paint scraper. There was some hard carbon underneath that I left on the piston, I didn't want to get all scratchy on the piston. On the piston crown that got totally clean, there was no damage to the metal , it looked like a new piston.

I don't want to post any of the pics here, but if you look at piston crowns with detonation damage, there's a slight similarity I guess, but none of that whitish looking stuff is piston damage, it's just flecks in the carbon layer.

https://www.google.com/search?q=detonation piston damage&hl=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=fiEuUbyJH5CG9gSAtID4BA&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1382&bih=852

While I endorse the dfeckel foolproof cam timing method and indeed, I have used it 2 times to get the cams back in the way they are supposed to be, I still had to go back in and move my exhaust cam 1 tooth forward. The bike was hard to start and wasn't running absolutely like it had been, but now, it is. This is the second time I have moved the exhaust cam one tooth from where the dimples visible from the right side of the bike say it should be. I once again used the dimples on the cam sprockets visible from the left side of the bike to time both cams and the bike is now back to what I had. The 1st pic below shows my final cam positioning.

More tidy up chores, got a clutch MC rebuild kit, (see 2nd pic) you'd think you'd get more for $50 but I guess that's Magura for ya.

I put a multimeter on the start button wires and saw a little bit of interferencee when the button was pushed, took the little bugger apart and filed the contact points and actually improved the resistance down to none.

Thanks to all who racked up 15,000 views!

Complete and total success, everything is fixed and working great. Rode 20 miles at 60mph, then rode 20 miles of dusty, rough trails, then 20 miles pavement home, 32 MPG, not 1 hiccup, the TE450 kept pace with a 530 Six Days and a new 500 EXC, no problem.

Had to do some trail maintenance, winds blew some dead trees across the trail.

Glad to hear this for you

Rode another 60 miles today, 70F weather, sweated like a pig, riding "hard dual sport" (like hard enduro, only easier), my buddy on his new to him Beta 450RR did the hill climb in the video, I wimped out, next time, I'll do it, it's alot worse than it looks. Set the video to 480p

He made it look pretty easy but being from that area I know about those "Baby heads" that can throw you left or right in an instant.