this is what's left of the original engine from this 2010 bmw s1000rr. this video is to look
inside the engine and see what may have gone wrong that caused it to fail.
for more background and history to see how i got to where i am today you can watch the
earlier videos about the modifications i've done to the bike. there's another video where
i actually show dismantling the engine. this engine was built by what i'll call supplier 2.
once the bike was back and running i started the break-in period.
as with any fresh engine you want to do a gentle break-in period to make sure that the engine
breaks in correctly and you have good reliability so for these particular engines you don't want to
go over seven or eight thousand rpm for the first 600 miles. i probably barely got to 7 000 once or
twice definitely never to the 8 000. as with any time you start up a bike you want to have
20 minutes or 20 miles of warm up period before you even start to go into any higher rpms as well.
this engine seized at 245 miles after being rebuilt. i was getting onto the interstate
shifting through the gears at about six seven thousand rpm and when i shifted into sixth the
ews light came on the dash the engine died i pulled in the clutch shifted down to neutral
rolled over. even though the engine seized my understanding is that the slipper clutch at that
speed would have kept it from locking up the back tire. every time i'd hit the start button
the starter would try to engage but basically was locked and since the starter had been
working correctly that meant the engine was seized somehow. i sent the whole bike up to supplier 6
who confirmed by putting a wrench on the crank that the engine was in fact seized. now that
i've taken the whole engine apart i'm going to go through a little bit of what i found that could be
aspects that may have caused it to fail. you can see the spark plug tips are
pretty dark for such low miles. crankshaft didn't really see anything of concern with that itself.
i don't know that it indicates anything was actually wrong but surprisingly when i split
the cases this particular bearing shell came out versus being stuck into the case
like the others. where the bike seems to have seized in the top end. the reason i say that
is once the timing chain and the valve train was disconnected from the crankshaft
i was able to put a wrench on the end of the crankshaft
and rotate the engine and it seemed to rotate fairly smoothly so that would mean that whatever
seized the engine was caused by something up in the top end uh valves cam something like that.
sometimes the valve will drop into the piston but that didn't happen in this case. when i took
the head off you could see that all the pistons were very black. the bottom of the combustion
chambers of the head were also black as well as the exhaust ports in the head that tends to mean
that potentially you're getting blow by. in other words oil is coming up from underneath the engine
and blowing by the rings and then burning where the piston and valves and combustion chamber are.
i went through and looked at the pistons versus the cylinders. you can see some really heavy wear
against the bottom wall of the engine which is the front. we also see some really heavy wear
against the rear of the cylinders and to match that you'll also see a wear pattern along the
front and the rear of the piston as well so that also would indicate that this piston may have been
a little bit of loose in there and if you look at how much wear we're seeing for only 245 miles.
i don't have the exact specs but just for an example this is a 80 millimeter which is over 65
of four thousands clearance is what they're recommending four thousands clearance is that
which looks a whole lot smaller than what we're seeing daylight or between that piston and
cylinder and again there's the light shining through that. kind of gives you an idea of
how much daylight is around there. remember this engine only had 245 miles on it at the
time it was seized. the camshafts were the worst looking part of the engine and taking it apart
these camshafts were put in new during the build and you can see how they look now. okay let's
look at the interface between the camshafts and the bearing caps and head. this piece here the
six bolt one had to be replaced because the holes that hold the valve cover on were stripped in it
and it actually looks pretty good. all the oil has been wiped off so everything you see is the color
of the metal but when you look at the one that was on there you can see and that's not oil that's
that's actually the metal itself so that looks pretty bad. there's wear on that one
a little bit galled and that's got a wear spot there as well and if you look at the actual
head again the six bolt piece the which is also closer to the chain so if you think about it the
timing chain is pulling the camshafts down over here which means it would be rising over there
but if you look at these those surfaces don't look too bad except that one there's got a big
scratch in it. you can see then as we get over here they get a lot worse that one particularly
that's not too great. that one's pretty awful to be honest. look at that that one
doesn't look so hot either. now the camshafts themselves again. if we start at this edge
and these were supposed to be a brand new set of cams installed you know those surfaces
it's not great. there's some scratches in it but and there's definitely more scuffs on them
and then like that i mean that's pretty bad that doesn't look very good either. it almost looks
like they're just burnt these ends of them you know if you stand back and look at them
they look nice and silver and gray here but they're burnt out on this end so
i'm not sure if there was something wrong in how the oil was getting or if the
tolerances weren't right or what. let's look at the cam lobes now.
i kind of rotate them around you see those surface cracks? definitely not a good sign.
you can see them pretty much the whole way around and that's pretty consistent except when you get
over here and that lobe right there. look at that cracks scuffs beautiful example. see both the uh
surface that's in contact with the heads as well as with the rockers are all looking pretty
bad down at this end but you know consistently even the cracks and stuff you're seeing at the
the less bad end. if you look at the other cam shaft again we see the same pattern of
surface cracks it. looks like and here as well and then again we see the really nasty stuff showing
up getting over to the cylinders furthest from the timing chain as well as that center part. i mean
that's just that's awful. same kind of flaws here just looking pretty much bad all over. if we look
at the top of the rockers some of them look pretty good and a lot of them do but then of course as
you get down in this end down here it's kind of hard to tell but hopefully you can kind of see the
scuffs on some of those really bad ones. if you look at all these pieces of information
what it tells you is that there's definitely a lot of friction between the camshaft and where it met
the cam bearing caps and where it met the valves or the rockers between the valves.
you can see that from the wear the look on the surface of the cam lobes would indicate
that perhaps it's had a poor heat treatment and that's why you're getting these surface cracks
now what we want to do is see if any of these valves are actually
stuck. all right what i'm trying to do is push on each of the valves and see if they move or not
and if anything i would expect the ones down on the far end furthest away from the chain to
be problematic since that's where the cams look the worst but we'll go one at a time.
okay that one moves.
and that one moves and they definitely vary a little bit and how easy they want to go down.
like that one just goes and then just stops
so does that mean that the valve was binding up in the guide because it just goes and stops
and that's it? this is most likely the place where the engine seized. i could get all the valves to
budge when i put my weight onto them but that doesn't mean that one of them didn't seize and
is the reason for the cause of the engine failure but the valves were sticky. they did vary in how
much they would move when i put pressure on them. if one of the valves was sticking in the guide
that could be the reason the engine seized as that would prevent the camshaft from rotating.
the other thing that seemed strange is when i was measuring the valve shims every one of them was
about 50% larger than the shim range that they recommend from bmw. i went through and measured
all the shims with a micrometer and double checked with the calipers just to make sure i was doing
all the math right. if you look at the shim measurements you can see the running three point
two and over the options that you can buy from bmw you can see they start at two 2.32
compared to nothing close to that. that's a lot more mass floating up on top of there. i guess
that means that between the combination of the work he did on the head and the camshaft design
it requires these thicker shims. it just doesn't seem like it's within the specs as intended
for that engine. i did check and it seems like the head gasket is the stock size part number.
with what i see here my best estimate is that either the camshafts had too much
force against the cam bearing caps causing the damage that you see to those surfaces.
now that could be for multiple things perhaps it was an oiling issue for some reason. maybe oil
wasn't getting where it should. another option could be that perhaps a valve did stick in the
guide and that prevented the camshaft from turning properly and seized it. what's fairly
obvious is this was not a high quality engine build. we can see that from the amount of slop
and wear that we're seeing in the pistons and cylinders already after such low mileage as well
as the blackened surfaces on the camshafts the cracks on the surfaces and the obvious
damage done in rotation between the camshaft and its main parts. regardless of what actually
caused the engine to fail the fact remains at 245 miles the engine did fail after spending
about two and a half years and twenty thousand dollars with supplier two to build it and that's
why this pile of parts in front of me is some of the most expensive scrap metal you're ever gonna
see.