raylohne1

hey guys...
squidly here...
been doing all the carb mods and bike ran 100% better...
but...
still had a hesitation...carb fart kinda thing during coasting...
then...
while idling starting making a horrible...timing chain kinda clattering...
shut it off quick...
restarts fine..
just clattering like hell...sounds like valvetrain to this mechanic...
what do I do now...other than tear it down for exploratory surgery...
I mean...what should I start with?
you guys are the best when it comes to SH...
everything you've written worked like a charm for me...
help...
ray

RWhisen

CCT failure. Don't restart.

matt365

Cam chain tensioner failure.

matt365

Beat me to it RWhisen.

Probably the front cylinder. Hopefully you didn't bend a valve, or damage the valve seats.

Plenty of threads on this that say it way better than I could. You're in for alot of work.

Hopefully you won't be sourcing a replacement head. Time for some manual tensioners.

Sorry to hear this Ray.

raylohne1

yeah...sounded like the front to me...
how do I diagnose?
pull the valve covers?

raylohne1

guys at my honda dealership were like...
oh no...never sold a tensioner...can't be that...
now I know why they never sold a tensioner...
no one wants a stock unit...

NHSH

Unfortunately, valve cover removed may not give you any indication.
If it is valves, you will see it only when you remove the cylinder head, as the CCT mistime the cam's first thing that will happen is the valves will hit the piston and bend, that's why you should not restart the motor, if you lucky, it will be only bend valves after that valves will break and damage the guides, head and piston, that becomes even more expensive.

Sorry to hear that, hope it will work out easier.

8541Hawk

This is not true. Remove the valve cover and check the valve clearances.
If they have opened up and are way out of spec large, then the valves are bent.

NHSH

BTW, there is a way to diagnose this easy enough, but I would only suggest this if you really feel you can do this!
If you will... You can try to remove the tensioner and push the chain slider in with a flat screw driver and start the bike for few seconds, if the clattering noise is gone then you know that it's only the timing chain tensioner and the damage is not extensive yet.
You may get lucky... Who knows.
Good luck

NHSH

That is correct, assuming raylohne1 knows how to check valve clearance

raylohne1

thanx...
I'm doing the teardown this morning...
will take pics...
you guys rock...

raylohne1

hey guys...
pulled the rear valve cover...
everything looks good...
front is going to be a little more difficult...
wow...what a beefy looking chain...love this bike...

aja

For the front take off mirrors, blinkers, front fairing, and oil cooler. You will need a 6" extension for the ratchet to get to the top bolts. Be careful when replacing the valve cover as the bolts snap very easily and only needs 7lbs of torque on them.

And please do not tighten the front tensioner and try to restart. If its out of time that will cause more damage even with tension on the chain.

I can almost gaurantee that when you remove the front tensioner you will find the internal spring broken. Check the knowledge base secton for proper tensioner removal as you can really screw it up.

RCVTR

I would remove the spark plugs and the timing inspection plugs on the left side cover. Set the engine to top-center compression on the front cylinder and see how far the chain skipped, if at all. Rotate the crank by hand with a 17mm socket. If you feel any hard resistance to rotation, due to a valve contacting a piston, stop. If the chain didn't skip, you can probably install a tensioner and be a happy camper. The next step would be a compression check. If it did skip, you can attempt to reset the cam timing and install a new tensioner.

But if the timing chain is completely slack on the back side, don't rotate the crank. At that point, I would make sure the cams are not actuating the valves and do a leakdown test.

raylohne1

thanx...
that helps...

Dan Cronin

Along with checking the valve clearences how about doing a compression check.

aja

If all it is is a cct failure, you only need to visually inspect the cams to check it is still in time. When mine went bad it skipped 2 teeth without causing any damage. Compressing, leakdown, etc isn't necessary until you determine if the valves are bent or not.

raylohne1

OK...got a six pack of cold Heinekens...
am going to do what you guys suggest...
let you know in a few hours...

7moore7

I'd do that last... requires spinning the motor, which may cause more damage if they are out of spec. I'm guessin that if you have no problem tearing the valve covers off, you'll have no problem checking cam timing and valve clearances.

I'd check timing like aja said, then do valve clearances. If the timing IS off, but valves are fine, then do a compression leakdown test just to be sure. If the timing IS off and valves are out of spec, I don't think a leakdown will tell you much more 'cause your compression will already be thrown from the bent valve.

My two cents.. I may not be thinking this through completely though. But don't take the heads off cause then you have to buy expensive gaskets...

raylohne1

thanks guys...
found the front chain completely loose...couldn't turn the motor over without a crunching sound...
pulled it apart...couldn't tell anything...kept going...
right down to the piston...
no marks...looks like valves are NOT bent...
but exhausts look kinda crappy and black...
gonna pull the valves out of the head and check everything...
anything good to do now?
any good head gasket recommendations?
I see why you guys love these machines...had it down to the piston in an hour...
one question...
there was water in the engine instead of coolant...WTF?

RWhisen

Someone may have put "water wetter" in there instead of coolant to make spec for track days.

NHSH

When you take the head apart, check the valves if they make full contact at the lip and see if they not loose in the valve guides, if you verify that the valves are good, then you don't have to replace them, the exhaust valves are twice more expensive then the inlet, may end up around 100$ between cost and shipping for the two, you can use a valve compound to restore the contact surface and put the head back together, don't forget to use the correct torque when you put all the bolts back.

As for the water, if you had no freezing and cracking issues, then don't worry, just replace it with antifreeze as recommended by Honda.

meanhawk98

mine did the same thing on Easter.from cylinder. bent valves.I replaced everything got it running and sold the piece of ****.tired on the hawk.its burden not an enjoyable machine.get an R1 way better.

RWhisen

I replaced the CCTs BEFORE they went as you were advised to do when you first joined this board. My Superhawk runs fine and is enjoyable, sorry you couldn't get yours running right.

raylohne1

yeah...the R1 is nice...had 1998...R6 is nice...had a 2003... probably get another one or a CBR1000...but I gotta say...as a mechanic and a motorcycle lover...these bikes are fantastic...whatever problems they might have...I'm six foot...220 lbs...I need this bike for comfortable sportbiking...and I love the kick-in-the-*** torque...not to mention the rumble from the cans...sorry meanhawk...jus sayin...

NHSH

+1 I believe that's why we all here

RCVTR

If there's no sign of valve contact on the piston dome, I wouldn't disassemble the heads, unless you are doing a valve job. Spray some contact cleaner in the combustion chambers around the valves and blow compressed air in the ports to assess the amount of leakage.

If you do pull the valves, you can expect to find pitted exhaust valve faces and valve seats. To fix it, you will need to buy new exhaust valves, cut new valve seats and reshim the valve clearance. If it was mine and I had it that far apart, that's what I would do. But I have all of the tools to do the head work in my garage.

You can also expect the valves to have a somewhat rattly fit in the valve guides. It's just part of the deal. The engine will run fine. If you get too particular about it, you will end up spending a lot of time and money.

Put it back together and ride it!

raylohne1

damn...that's just what the dealership mechanic said...
I'll take your advice...
although I LOVED the way those dealership guys looked when they TESTED my tensioner and found out...lo and behold..
it's broke!
I mentioned that if I weren't a mechanic...THEIR advice would have cost me thousands at their dealership...

7moore7

Honda dealers can't make heads or tails of these bikes. Their advice is always to be taken with a very large grain of salt.

GTS

Well one thing you have to remember about the dealerships is they get tons of different bikes day in and day out. They generally don't get a lot of one bike and honestly there aren't a lot of Superhawks out there that I've seen. Where on a site like this it's all Superhawks so anyone on the site sees these problems regularly. I was a tech in a shop from '98-'04 and I can't think of one tensioner on any bike that I"ve seen completely fail. I've seen some not give proper tension and replaced a handful on F4's and F2's and even did one on my buddies XX a few weeks ago, but I've never heard or seen one actually bust completely. Then I come on this forun and it seems every other thread is CCT related and lots are busting. Expecting the guys at the dealerships to know every single problem about every single bike is like asking the general subscriber to this forum questions about a Busa. Some may know but most wont.

OK back on topic, when you guys who have seen the timing jump and valves bent is there generally one side or the other that bends? Or does it bend intakes and exhaust valves equally? It looked like when the tensioner fell out of mine it was the intake cam that jumped teeth but the exhaust cam looked fine.

One other thing I noticed was it seemed that the cross over guide between the cam was close to the exhaust but not the intake. I couldn't get the exhaust cam to jump a tooth so I'm wondering if that bridge was a little longer so that it was close over the tops of the cam sprockets if it would help keep them from jumping and if this would be a worth while modification to prevent this if the tensioners ever did fail.