VF500F motor going bad?

Oh, I'm sure it will be. I think finding more bench space may be harder than pulling the motor tho'!

Price you pay for having a 24 year old bike

 

v max

This is a cake walk. pull it out and chuck it on a bench. Super easy that way. when your done stick it back in , clean and shining. You will be very happy when your done and wont have 20 hours in the whole thing.:thumbsup:And you will know it inside and out.I wish they were sold new toady. Best beginer bike and the best hooligan bike. GOOD LUCK .If you go to sell it let me know.

 

rock n roll, pull that beotch out, and get ready for the :soapbox::vtr2:

 

Nah, I'm not going to sell it. If I was, it wouldn't already be half dis-assembled up on the lift already. Have to say, I'm loving that lift. That said, I'm going to have to run up to my Dad's place and help him install his two-pole car lift -- that will make working on my Jeep all the easier too.

I'm actually pretty jazzed about tearing into this bike, anything used I get, I'm never comfortable with until I've torn it apart and put it back together. :crazy:

All ready did that with my 91 400 Bandit, it was a basket case when it showed up, glad I got it away from my step-daughter before she rode it anymore. It literally wasn't safe to ride. Rotten tires, rotten rotors, gelled brake fluid, screwed up plug wires, rusty tank, frozen chain, etc,... It ran, but just well enough to get you into trouble. She didn't know any better and bought it off a "friend". There were a number of "war-zone" fixes on the bike I had to unravel.

I got a good thousand miles on the interceptor since I bought it and once I started hearing something funky, I stopped. Time to put it up in the air and give it a going through.

Parts are lighter than anything I pulled off of my Jeep! Just a touch more complicated tho'.

It is a great beginner bike, I do have to say that, very easy to ride. The Bandit has that I4 narrow power band that will suddenly kick in and surprise you and you row through the gears to keep it in that power band (and no torque). With the interceptor, I drop it in third, leave it there and run away from the Bandit in the twisties.

Both are fun, but I prefer the Interceptor.

 

It's pretty normal for the VF500's to make sounds like that. All of the 500's I've ever owned have made that sound, and it's always the same. I'd be aware of it and watchful for it to get worse. My guess is that it won't, and you'll be fine for a very, very long time.

 

Listening to as many vintage v4's as I could find on youtube, I tend to concur.

Still, it is up in the air with the body work, tank etc off and I'll be minimally checking the valves, carb clean/balance all the usual maintenance to establish a baseline for my records. And simply to get familiar with the bike, if something more seems amiss, we'll dig further into it.

 

pretty much sounds like mine with only 7k on the clock...it's too bad that these other PO's treated these kings like garbage....

I look-up to you Jamie for your passion of the 1st gen VF's.

And yes, I'm dreading doing a full-tune up on the VF. This will be my first season on her....

And 243Win, let us know what you find....

Cheers,
LL

P.S. check your cam lobes for any pits...or it will eat-up your rocker arm faces.

 

It's actually the other way around. The rocker faces wear first which will then take out the cam lobes.

 

Well, I finally got the time to get the valve-covers off, really not too bad to get into for a valve adjust in the future methinks, comes apart pretty easily.

Anyhow, the cams look just fine (nice to know, first time I've peaked at them), but the rear cam-chain has noticeably more slack than the front. Grabbing it by the sides under that top cover, I can easily push it down, whereas the same techiniqe on the front produces almost no movement.

So I'd say the noise I'm hearing is a loose cam-chain as originally suspected.

 

It lives!

Yeah, the bike is running again, fired it up for the first time today since Feb. (work too much and too many projects/chores).

It was as I suspected, the rear camchain tensioner was bad. Swapped in a brand new one (once I found one) and it is much quieter. The old tensioner arm had noticably less arc in in than the new one.

I didn't have to pull the motor, I used these directions from here:

Carlparker.com - Honda V4 Cam Chain Tensioner Swap Page

His two coat hangers and a long screw driver made it relatively easy to do.

I'd take it for a ride today, but the same thunderstorm that forced me to work in the garage rather than cut the winter wood is still dumping rain on me.

Mark me one happy camper! Good to get into that motor and see it looks pretty good inside and now all is well with it. Now onto the 17inch wheel conversion,...

 

hey glad those tensioners worked out for ya!

 

Thanks, but it turned out I didn't use them I bumbled across some new old stock and used those, they had three different iterations of the tensioner and the latest had markedly more arc in the actual tensioner arm than yours or my original one I yanked out. Your parts are squirrelled away now awaiting the next time I need to do this.

The site I found was able to provide new tensioners, including a new tower and a full engine gasket set. Now if I could only find that site again,...:crazy: