| Author | Message | ||
     Ratbuell |
How many folks who broke the throttle shaft, had previously done the breather reroute? I know..."weak metal" and "poor design" and all that (neither of which I particularly buy into)...but if one end of the shaft is binding up and the other end is getting rotated by the throttle cables, it *will* break at the weakest point - i.e. where there's a hole drilled in it... | ||
| Motorbike |
Ratbuell, are you thinking that the oily spooge should lubricate the throttle shaft pivot or did I just totally misunderstand your question? Thanks. | ||
| Ratbuell |
Nope, you're correct. That's what I'm thinking. Same reason the field manual for my '61 M35A2 Deuce and a half says to add one gallon of UMO (used motor oil) to every 50 gallon tank of fuel - to lube the fuel system. Think about it - there's some moving parts in there. The rest of the engine has oil to lube it...everywhere its needed. You pull the breather and reroute it, and the throttle body goes dry. Not like it gets hot or anything. And I've never noticed any "oily spooge" on my bikes' intakes. Some residue, sure...and after I ride the S2 in the rain that residue can turn to a spooge-like substance after rainwater mixes with it in the filter housing...but the XB and CR? Far from what I'd consider "spooge". Spooge is what's all over my 180k mile Jeep's engine. At least, in my book. So, back to my original post / poll: how many folks with failed shafts, had the breathers re-routed before the failure? | ||
| Ronmold |
Beat you to it Rat, I asked that same question a month ago and no responses. I would like to know also. | ||
| Ratbuell |
Be interesting to see...especially if anyone chimes in. Remember - there's not even *fuel* going past the throttle plate on these bikes....at least a carb bike with a breather re-route has fuel hitting the plate.... | ||
| Ronmold |
The shafts on the '06 ride on nylon bushings though, the new ones are on ball? | ||
| Ratbuell |
Nylon or ball....either one can dry out, especially in a high-heat location like that. Add to that anything that gets through the air filter (grit, otherwise known as "abrasive")...I dunno. I just don't care for the idea of dried out, high temperature moving parts. And even with stock breathers...I don't have a lick of low-RPM "non-smoothness" like others are reporting. (shrug) | ||
| Rwcfrank |
My money is on abrupt tooling finish coupled with vibration. A lack of lubrication will result in galling and not failure. The usual butterfly design in at least automotive is a slotted shaft in a double shear design. | ||
| Ratbuell |
And automotive PCV valves feed into the airbox as well...giving oil vapor to the intake tract. | ||
| Hughlysses |
And automotive PCV valves feed into the airbox as well...giving oil vapor to the intake tract. Yea, but they built cars (and motorcycles, and lawnmower engines, and a myriad of other engines) with carburetors with butterflies for ~50 years before PCV valves came along and didn't have any problems. (Message edited by Hughlysses on August 09, 2010) | ||
| Ratbuell |
...and again, carburetors are generally "wet" designs. EFI has dry throttlebodies, at least multipoint EFI, with the injectors at (or nearer to) the head, not the throttle body. | ||
| Sharkguy |
Also, how many that have had failures are spraying carb cleaner into the throttle bodies? That stuff will remove anything that could/would be a potential lube. Also, do they all break at the drilled hole closest to the cable end? The only pics I have seen are broken there. | ||
| Natexlh1000 |
Sorry, not buying it. My X1 shaft failed at the screw hole, not wear on the pivot area. All the pics of other failures have been at the screw hole too. | ||
| Metaldude |
An interesting theory, that the binding in the pivot area causes the shaft to break at its weakest point -- the screw hole. But we'll need both sides of the equation to be true for it to stand: - Only bikes with breather re-routed engines break throttle shafts. - No broken throttle shafts on stock breather bikes. Before everyone with a stock setup chimes in that their's hasn't broken, has anyone with a stock breather setup had a broken shaft? | ||
| Andymnelson |
And why on the 12 and not the 9 motor? My XB9S has been ridden HARD for about 22,000 miles, most without the breather line running into the motor and no issues. | ||
| Garrcano |
I know about two broken shafts, one with rerouting and the other without. | ||
| Mnrider |
Throttle body does not need lube-it does not move that much. Car and truck throttle bodies are dry. I think it's just a weak shaft that causes them to break. Most throttle bodies have support on both sides of the plate. I can see how backfiring could cause a crack or break in the shaft. | ||
| Froggy |
45k on my 06 with the breather reroute. No issue. That said, it is rare for this part to fail, I know of more people that have had headlights burnout. | ||
| Ftd |
If this is a concern run SeaFoam every so often. It is ~1/2 oil. Ingredient % Pale Oil 40.00 - 60.00 Naphtha 25.00 - 35.00 (hydrocarbons) IPA 10.00 - 20.00 (rubbing alcohol) | ||
| Swampy |
I had my throttle shaft get sticky while it was stock breather setup. I lubed the shaft and all was well. | ||
| Dirt |
My shaft failed with stock breather system. When I installed the new TB, I did the breather reroute to eliminate filter saturation and constant pooling of oil in the filter pan. It was at the point that oil was dripping down the left side of the frame when parked on the kickstand, and I only put enough oil in the swingarm to barely touch the tip of the dipstick. I guess my point is that there was plenty of lubrication for the TB, at least in my case. | ||
| Paul56 |
Mnrider nailed it: It's a weak design. There's next to no material cross-section left to transfer the load after the screw hole is added. Piss-poor design. Slotted shaft will eliminate the problem. | ||
| Desmo900 |
Ya think maybe people are rotating the throttle too far backwards while doing a TPS reset? Getting the butterfly to wedge in the intake runner could put alot of strain on the shaft | ||
| Ourdee |
I think it could also have to do with the backfire sputter I get when opening the throttle too fast on a cold engine. | ||
| Paul56 |
It's a weak shaft! I've never done a TPS reset on mine (nope, not even after 82k miles has it needed one) It has only seen full throttle a handful of times. It has only backfired a couple of times. It's a POS design. Period. | ||
| Ratbuell |
It's a POS design. Period. That's funny, because there are many out there like mine with 15,000+ miles (HARD miles, including TPS resets when scheduled) and no breakage. Flawed *design*, they'd ALL break regardless of how they're used. Flawed *something* (environment, usage method, modifications), and SOME will break. | ||
| Sekalilgai |
No breather re-route here. I was speculating backfire as with Ourdee... mine puked about 2 hours of riding into some crappy rain storm..... steady speed. I believe the bike was at around 37k. | ||
| Froggy |
Hmm it went 82k miles and it broke? Must be a flawed design.... | ||
| Methed |
You wrote what I was thinking, Froggy. As far as flawed/defective design, I've been around much in my line of work--if we encounter a potential defect, it has to be repeatable. Sure you can get flaws in material--brittle steel, whatever--but the outcome and effect should be consistent for nearly if not all consumers if it is 'piss-poor design'. That said, I just did a TPS reset, reroute, and intensive cleanup of my intake and throttle-body. My airbox was also splooge-ified and cause numerous performance issues, so I figured it was worth a shot, plus it is a pretty standard mod for Sporties. So at 34k miles and no breakage to date, it looks like I've just set myself up as the guinea pig on this one. I'll let you know how it turns out. | ||
| Ratbuell |
And THIS is what I like to see - actual discussion. Good stuff, keep it coming  |
