1998 vtr w/ 21000 miles. I was riding down a hill as normal rpms were about 3-4000 and the engine started to make a clanking sound. Shut it down right away had it towed to bike shop. This can't be good.. Has anyone had this happen before? What should I expect for it to cost?

 

search " CCT failure"

 

sounds like you lost a cct, but luckly you shut it down in time.

 

Hmmmmm........ CCT failure does sound likely.

 

do you think that it hurt the bike when it failed or is it an easy fix? What do you think it will cost?

 

It depends, if the valves hit the pistons you could have bent valves etc and that could be pricey. (in fact a good deal on an EBAY motor sometimes ends up cheaper) If you got it shut off in time you might have been lucky and only need the cct's replaced and the valve train retimed.

Either way, after the repair, do the change to manual CCTs to prevent another failure.

TMBmotorsport manual CCT's are the cheaper and better option these days (link in Truckinduc's signature a few posts earlier) APEs were the only option when I did mine.