| Author | Message | ||
     Radon30 |
I had a wrist pin slide over the keeper and damage the cylinder wall and piston. JE pistons, was i provide the wrong size keeper?? The other keeper came out and i found it in the oil tank of course it was smashed and in smaller pieces.I know i should have double checked it, i assumed everything was o.k. Has anyone ever had this issue with JE pistons? I will throw some pictures up later. | ||
| Pammy |
Was this just one rod and piston? Show pictures of the end of the wristpin(undamaged side) or tell me if the end of the wrist pin is beveled or flat. And was the cir clip round or flat? I don't think I have seen this unless there was a crank issue. | ||
| Radon30 |
Actually the wrist pin is not damaged, it did the damage. The retaining rings are round and the wrist pin ends do have a slight chamfer. Rod end bushing look ok. | ||
| Radon30 |
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| Pammy |
By that picture(#2), it looks like the wire lock is too small. It's not the most detailed photo, though. | ||
| Rocketman |
This is exactly how my Wiseco pistoned S1W snapped a rear rod and sent it through the cases. A Buell trained technician removed the pistons whilst carrying out warranty work on the top end, and placed the pistons back on the rods with stock HD cir clips. They are considerably thinner wire gauge than Wiseco cir clips, and the wrist pin worked its way through the cir clip on one side, which allowed the hole to become cone shaped at the opposite side, eventually the forced angle of the pin snapping off the top of the rod. Pic's are archived somewhere on the BadWeB. Moral? Always use the correct size cir clip. Rocket | ||
| Reepicheep |
I guess the other moral is that if you are a company, don't do warranty work on significantly modified engines. There are a lot more opportunities for defect and new (hard) lessons to be learned. | ||
| Rocketman |
Why would you say that as if you're defending the dealerships efforts Bill? The warranty work had nothing what so ever to do with my engine being modified. You've been here long enough to know the details. The casting on the front head broke where the front mount bolt fits. After much debate with Buell UK they finally agreed to repair the problem, offering to supply a new front head. That was of no use to me as my head is Dick O'Brien flowed, so it needed repairing. Buell UK had the dealer remove the head and give to me to repair, then back to the dealer to install. Whilst this was taking place I was allowed the dealer purchase price of a new head towards the repair work, but I was asked to spend it in the shop. I did. I paid for extra labour to have the rear head and both cylinders removed, to which I supplied new piston rings and a top end Cometic gasket set for the dealer to fit. The technician took it upon himself to remove the pistons, which I would not have done, to fit the base gaskets and rings. I can only guess that a brain fart lead him to put the pistons back on using stock HD cir clips and not the purpose fit Wiseco cir clips that are required for Wiseco pistons. What's more wrong with the technicians brain fart was he has built plenty of modified Buell engines, including mine originally. But yes we all make mistakes but even a blind man could see the stock cir clips were almost smooth in the groove on the Wiseco piston. Mistakes yes. Stupidity never. So yes Bill it irks me a little that somehow people think modifying an engine is a good get out clause for warranty issues. It actually should be, if it's our mistake no matter what's in your engine, we'll put it right. That never happened in my case and I spent two years of down time unable to even take no more than a cleaning cloth to my S1W because of the legal ramifications. Then there was a further year for me to strip the motor, source the parts, and rebuild it properly after the legal end was taken care of. That by the way came in the way of a settlement which saw me returned a brand fire new set of cases with my original engine number stamped on them. Cost to the dealer, a paltry £700. That for me was £700 more than the value they placed on keeping me happy. And when I think of the several people I've actually put onto Buells through introducing them to the brand. That's at least one thing I can assure you will never happen again. Yes it's history, and it's all good now, but when I finally got to communicate with the prune that dropped the cir clip bollock, he had the audacity to slander me for attempting to get freebies and favours out of the dealer rather than admit and apologise for his stupidity. Yes it definitely still irks me when some see fit to champion the dealers cause when they are inherently responsible for their work. You know what I found out sometime later? The dealers workshop were insured up to the hilt for exactly what shit they put me through, and they didn't give a damn to even consider putting my problem through their workshop insurance. Rocket | ||
| Radon30 |
It sure is funny this thing held together for three years, through some hard abuse at the drag strip before this problem occured. One would think that it would have failed alot sooner for a stupid misstake. | ||
| Pammy |
Radon, you may have crank issues that caused the wrist pin to actively be pushed out one side. I have seen that before. But usually it pushes the cir clip out as well. In that #2 picture it appears that the circlip may be a bit small. And that would explain why the clip wasn't pushed out. Is it just one piston, both? | ||
| Pammy |
"I guess the other moral is that if you are a company, don't do warranty work on significantly modified engines. There are a lot more opportunities for defect and new (hard) lessons to be learned." If you are a (motorcycle repair)company, any work you do involves 'warranty' whether on the front side or backside of the repair/modification. Unfortunately, no way outta that. I have seen companies(technicians), that may be a bit shy on experience, try to work on even stock parts and make a mess of them, much less anything a little 'out of the box'. So everything is relative in this world. I have absolutely no knowledge of any of the trama Rocket experienced, so I can't and won't speak of that. But being a shop that makes it's living "work(ing) on significantly modified engines", I felt compelled to post a little something.  | ||
| Radon30 |
Pammy, just the rear piston. | ||
| Reepicheep |
In the case you mentioned, had your parts been stock, and had the tech walked over to the parts counter and asked for the stock part for your stock bike, he or she would have put the bike back together with no incident. You seemed to make a point about the damage being done by a "Buell Trained Technician". Yet the problem was caused by putting a stock part onto a non stock part. Had the engine been stock, would the technicians actions have caused a failure? I'm just suggesting that if Buell is training technicians and considering warranty work, if they were smart, they would train people to avoid touching significantly modified engines without much higher estimates, lots more disclaimers, much more in depth training, and ready access to the engine builder. So I think I agree with Pammy. If I had Her and Wes build me a monster engine, I would not expect my local Buell dealer to be able to take it apart and put it back together without a high risk of screwing something up. Pammy is in the engine customization business and knows customizations inside and out. Buell dealers are in the Buell engine business, and I expect them to know stock engines (and fairly common modifications, or modifications *they* perform) fairly well. I don't expect them to be able to do the kind of work Pammy does as well as she and Wes can do it. I had a $300 Garmin Quest that took a dump when only a few months old, and right before a big trip. I rolled my dice and took it apart and tried to fix it myself (badly the first time) because I needed it working the next morning. I got it working, but it was a kludge. I contacted Garmin, explained the situation, and noted that the only parts I had modified were the parts that were not working in the first place, and that had to be replaced anyway in order to fix the unit. They offered me a reduced price for repair, but would not honor their warranty, which I had clearly violated by performing my own modification. My position on this was that it was annoying, and that as a customer I was not happy about it, but that they were within their rights under the warranty, and that I could not really blame them. Then I fixed it right myself, published my discoveries here and at Advrider to help others that get bit by the same bug, and walked towards the light. | ||
| Radon30 |
I didn't mean to cause a bitch session here, but my take on Rocketmans story would be the tech and or dealership should of declined the work if he or she recognize the parts as being non-stock. If they don’t feel comfortable working on performance parts, then turn down the work. Work was performed and additional damage was done because of the negligence of the tech. The dealership should stand behind their work, no matter what. Warranty or not, they did the work and because of that a catastrophic failure occurred. | ||
| Pammy |
Did you pull the front cylinder off as well? You should inspect the wrist pin hole in that piston also. If the rear rod/bearing has a problem...what you are experiencing is exactly what would happen. The rear rod, being female has two bearing/surfaces. If one bearing goes before the other the rod drops to one side. The piston tries to stay straight in the bore, so the piston and rod are no longer trying to stay parallel to one another. On every revolution that the rod makes, it is rolling that wrist pin out of the piston. On the other front...to quote my favorite actor..."a man has got to know his limitations". | ||
| Rocketman |
Bill, why would you feel the need to offer some sort of sympathy because the technician was working on a tuned engine? The Buell trained technician in question, that attended several training courses in the States, built my engine in the first place. Not only built it but built several others similar and more powerful too. One of which was the fastest 1/4 mile S1 in the world on street tyres and no wheelie bars. Hell, he even worked for Honda UK as one of their top tech's, and got there from being Honda apprentice of the year when starting his illustrious motorcycle technician career. Bill, it's this simple. If any technician isn't capable of understanding how to build or repair a tuned engine of any nature then they should not have taken the job on in the first place. There are no excuses. Radon, the rod came out of the case unexpectedly after 1300 miles since the piston was put back on the rod after the warranty work was completed. 1300 miles is how long it took the wrist pin to work its way through one cir clip without any warning, until it was too late and it broke the top of the rod off. Rocket | ||
| Rocketman |
Look closely at the damaged piston and you will notice how the wrist pin behaved. The damaged cir clip is like that because it was dug out of the piston. At first it was thought the cir clip had come out as it wasn't visible until some of the alloy was scraped away inside the rather enlarged conical shaped wrist pin hole.  If anyone has reason to believe they have a cir clip problem in their motor, it is prudent to check every piston - cir clip, unless you want to risk what you see in this pic. Hope this educates. Rocket | ||
| Steveshakeshaft |
Just curious, has anyone used plastic buttons to retain the wrist pins instead of circlips on these motors? | ||
| Rocketman |
By plastic I presume you mean Teflon button style keepers Steve. I was going to, but thought it a little overkill considering I had new Wiseco cir clips supplied with the piston kit. So why would we want to use them? Is it because tuners who frequently tare down and rebuild engines find them less fiddly than cir clips, or is it they're a good insurance policy due to their alleged superiority? Rocket | ||
| Pammy |
http://www.cycle-rama.com/ShopTour.html look at the last pic on the page...we sometimes use inserts even in the piston skirt... | ||
| Pammy |
The down side of using buttons is weight. You have to run a longer wrist pin, typically. The up side is there is no chance of messing up using the wrong cir clip(like the above photo's) or improper installation of the cir clip. | ||
| Justin_case |
Many Lycoming aircraft engines use aluminum buttons to retain full-floating wrist pins. | ||
| Steveshakeshaft |
Well, if the clips aren't there, they cannot come out. Seems like a good idea on an engine that's going to be pushed to its limits? | ||
| Steveshakeshaft |
Thanks Pammy, good pictures, interesting. |
