Clean Valve Cover

Ok, I feel funny about starting a new thread, but I felt worse imposing on someone else's. Today I took the front Valve Cover off. Never have I bought something used that looked soo clean. My exp. with bikes is small, so the cleanliness has raised a few questions.

1) Is it normal for this at 12500 mi?

2) Included is a pic of I believe the #1 Intake. Kinda crusty inside and the inked numbers/letters make me think a junk yard engine swap. But how clean the Valve train is up front makes me question the junk yard theory.

Thanks for your time fellers!

 

When I bought my 500 it had been sitting for about 5 years, had just over 14K on it. I fully expected to see some crud when I pulled the cam covers. It actually looked TOO clean, just like yours.

 

ABSOLUTELY! Too clean! It's nice don't get me wrong but it has raised a flag. NE way, maybe i should just shut up and count my blessings. The real flag is the inked numbers on the front cyl. head. Same tag on the rears too. Anyone know of a link to find out how to determine frame/engine matching numbers?

 

I would have to go dig through my old parts, but I am thinking that was normal to have numbers inked on the heads. If everythings is running great I wouldn't worry about it.

 

Here you go:

 

Invisible you ROCK!!! Thanks dude!

 

Glad to be of help. Let us know how you make out.

On a side note, Dave Dodge mentioned in an e-mail I received awhile back that it is a good idea to back date the valve springs on the '86 engine to the earlier '84/'85 design. I didn't go too far into this with DD as I have an '84 engine but I thought I would mention this as you have an '86.

The caveat here is that the '84/'85 valve springs are NLA. I am currently looking into a few options for aftermarket valve springs based on kits supplied for the VTR250 (which shared the same part numbers as the '84/'85). Hopefully this will be the ticket to a source for new - upgraded - valve springs for VF500F owners.

 

NLA? I don't know what that is. But it sounds good. Like the postal service says, "if it fits it shipps!"

 

NLA (No Longer Available)...not a good thing when it comes to spare parts.

NOS (New Old Stock) is the one you want ;-)