Engine rebuild or swap

[dirty paradise]

Hello y’all!

So here’s the deal. Bought a 2000 firestorm just over a year ago, and about 6 months later it let me down. Engine shut down at a red light with a very bad noise in the engine. Took it to the mechanics, verdict was CCT failure, snapped/bent valves, hole in the front piston… ): According to him the rear cylinder is intact, but he couldn’t guaranty the bits under the front piston were fine or not.


It did look like too much trouble to try to fix it then as I didn’t have a place to work on it, and the mechanic was asking way too much money for the job. So the bike has been sitting (covered) in a friend’s garden since june last year.

I just got hold of a garage, and have all the time in the world at the moment , so I thought time to put this old lady back on the road. I’m no mechanic, but I’m pretty handy and again have loads of free time.

Now, my main question is do I get a whole engine and do a swap or do I try to get a front cylinder head, front piston, cam and cover and put this all together myself?? The 2nd option works out a lot cheaper, but I need to be sure nothing else has been damaged…
Are there any parts that are likely to have been damaged when CCT failure?
Anything bad that could result from those 6 months of staying outside engine opened?

Any input would be welcome.

Cheers

[agentpineapple]

Speak to tony mon, he's the expert...

[bsabloke]

Plenty of time & money to rebuild. Cheaper & less time consuming to swap engines. Just make sure you get a guarantee on replacement engine & fit manual cct's. You can offset some of the costs selling parts from your old engine. End result either way is good (a running vtr). You won't regret it. Post up your location (on your profile) members may want to help you.
Welcome to the club.
Richard

[mattycoops43]

Personally I would go for a complete engine rebuild, replacing the parts that need and checking everything else.

You will probably spend what you could get a running engine for on bits, but at the end you will have an engine which you know is A1, Don't care about guarantee on a used engine, putting it in then having to take it out again because it went pop is too demoralising.

[dirty paradise]

ok so I'm starting to think that doing a swap is the wisest option. I will then strip the old engine and sell the working bits.

Is there anyone here with experience on removing/fitting the engine? Will I need any specific tools for the job? I tried googling it without luck.

[Kev L]

ok so I'm starting to think that doing a swap is the wisest option. I will then strip the old engine and sell the working bits.

Is there anyone here with experience on removing/fitting the engine? Will I need any specific tools for the job? I tried googling it without luck.

Wait for a response from Tony.mon mate. He's a member on the forum and a dab hand at tearing VTR's apart and putting them together in the correct order. He lives in Kent so not a million miles from you. I'll pm him for you mate.

[tony.mon]

hello
Sorry for delay, been working on mine all day up in the garage.

Well done for choosing to do it yourself, as you say it's marginal whether it's worth it getting a workshop to do the work.
Frankly, in my opinion, anything costing more than £500 is a reason to break it and start again, for a mostly standard bike.

If you decide to strip and fully rebuild the engine, it's easy to spend more than this, bearings, seals, gaskets, all add up.

It's fair to say that an engine that's been rebuilt by you is always a safer buy/spend than one bought from a broken bike- if you do this I'd always ask for details as to why the bike has been broken- a mid or low speed crash is usually safest, as at least it was running at the point of impact...

As to whether yours is rebuildable, yes, it shouldn't be a problem.

The big end and main on the side that the con rod is on (the two con rods are side by side on the crank, of course), and so any shock to one piston will affect one side or the other.

But the bottom end on these is very strong, and assuming you didn't try to ride it home or keep starting it up to see if it had fixed itself, it will only have been running for a few seconds after the piston hit the broken-off valve.
I completely wrecked an engine recently, three snapped-off valves and massive piston damage- but I could have re-used the bottom end with the same bearings, when I stripped it there was almost no wear, a couple of very small scores on the bearing face, but nothing that would mean it had to be changed.
I chose to scrap that engine, for safety's sake, as I couldn't tell if the crank had been twisted without lots of work, and as I have several spares I just stripped and inspected to find out why it failed (my own fault in the end, I'd made a stupid error last time I rebuilt it).

Yours will be fine.
You'll need a new or secondhand piston, definitely new rings, and a new head. Some shims and a head gasket, and job's a good'un.
However.... I think on balance if I were you I'd replace the cams and cam chain in that cylinder, too, as there will have been a lot of stress on the top end- they heavy crank will have been trying to force the cams to turn when the broken parts were jamming them.

I can sort you a piston, if you want; tenner?

Pistons in these engines never wear, even a higher mileage one will still show the machining marks on the skirt... As long a s the lands are good (between the ring grooves) they're reusable without problems.

Obviously, you need to check your bore for scoring.



Good luck!

[dirty paradise]

hello
Sorry for delay, been working on mine all day up in the garage.

Well done for choosing to do it yourself, as you say it's marginal whether it's worth it getting a workshop to do the work.
Frankly, in my opinion, anything costing more than £500 is a reason to break it and start again, for a mostly standard bike.

If you decide to strip and fully rebuild the engine, it's easy to spend more than this, bearings, seals, gaskets, all add up.

It's fair to say that an engine that's been rebuilt by you is always a safer buy/spend than one bought from a broken bike- if you do this I'd always ask for details as to why the bike has been broken- a mid or low speed crash is usually safest, as at least it was running at the point of impact...

As to whether yours is rebuildable, yes, it shouldn't be a problem.

The big end and main on the side that the con rod is on (the two con rods are side by side on the crank, of course), and so any shock to one piston will affect one side or the other.

But the bottom end on these is very strong, and assuming you didn't try to ride it home or keep starting it up to see if it had fixed itself, it will only have been running for a few seconds after the piston hit the broken-off valve.
I completely wrecked an engine recently, three snapped-off valves and massive piston damage- but I could have re-used the bottom end with the same bearings, when I stripped it there was almost no wear, a couple of very small scores on the bearing face, but nothing that would mean it had to be changed.
I chose to scrap that engine, for safety's sake, as I couldn't tell if the crank had been twisted without lots of work, and as I have several spares I just stripped and inspected to find out why it failed (my own fault in the end, I'd made a stupid error last time I rebuilt it).

Yours will be fine.
You'll need a new or secondhand piston, definitely new rings, and a new head. Some shims and a head gasket, and job's a good'un.
However.... I think on balance if I were you I'd replace the cams and cam chain in that cylinder, too, as there will have been a lot of stress on the top end- they heavy crank will have been trying to force the cams to turn when the broken parts were jamming them.

I can sort you a piston, if you want; tenner?

Pistons in these engines never wear, even a higher mileage one will still show the machining marks on the skirt... As long a s the lands are good (between the ring grooves) they're reusable without problems.

Obviously, you need to check your bore for scoring.



Good luck!

Thanks for your input! I'm bringing the bike home tomorrow but from what I could see today when I went to see it, the damages are far greater than I remembered... The rear valve cover is missing, and has been missing ever since the bike is in the garden -- I couldn't take a proper look, but there was a lot of rust all over!
I'm gonna start looking at used engines tomorrow, and I will open the broken one in the coming days to see what's salvageable.

Again, is there anything I should know about swapping engine? Any specific tools required?

[AMCQ46]

You will need the castellated engine bolt adjusting tool, and CyberCarl did a good write up on how to set the engine bolts. Have a good look in the workshop and knowledge base sections

[tony.mon]

verdict was CCT failure, snapped/bent valves, hole in the front piston… ): According to him the rear cylinder is intact, but he couldn’t guaranty the bits under the front piston were fine or not.
Cheers

That's not a hole in the piston...... ... .jpg[/img]

Properly or not at all, that's me.

[Jamoi]

[Watty]

Look out, Jamie's on the crayons again

[Wicky]

ET?


VT Ahhhhh?

[lloydie]

:Lol: both look good

[tony.mon]

You wait til it's looking up at you then....
Ah well, at least the piston's lighter that way.