Jim's 1988 VTR250 Interceptor

Sometimes things are done for looks. And you know what? It's fucking cool. As long as you don't go backwards in performance. And no, the tire for that wheel is not appreciably heavier to yield any true negative results. And sometimes the tire selection opens up just a little. When I saw it, I certainly didn't think, "Well, that was a waste of time."

Why did Honda update the front end and put a wider rear wheel on the 90, when the 89 worked perfectly fine?

Cheers sm!!!

 

Now you can put some fresh (cheap) oil in and personally hear what someone else thinks is "bad".

 

Yes sir, going to adjust the valves first then let 'er rip!

 

I bought my last one there and it was a POS. Reads really low, like so low it can't possibly be right.

Or maybe I am doing it wrong. I did buy a leak down tester also, but it was also of dubious quality.

 

Motion pro off amazon maybe?

 

Update, could not even get a 0.002" under any of the valves on the front cylinder. It is suppossed to have 0.006" to 0,008".

So I am guessing there were valves never completely closing on the cylinder. I hope I don't have a bunch of burned valves and seats.

 

Update,

Update, any kind of service was never performed on this bike. It's a Honda, it's supposed to run forever.

 

It could run just fine on no clearance and rabbit food since it is a Honda.

 

lol.....

 

I worked at a Honda dealer for 4 years in a college town.....I have seen some shit in my time!

 

So I buttoned everything back up and started it...It fired right up but has a pretty good amount of noise (tapping) coming from the rear cylinder.

It does not sound like anything from the bottom end, I am thinking it is the cam chain tensioner.

From other posts I have read it looks like this was a fairly common issue on certain Hondas. Since it looks like the tensioner works off of oil, I am imagining the oil in the tensioner looks terrible and the tensioner is stuck.

I also read that the oil supply pipe for the tensioner could get clogged also and cut off oil to it.

As Capn 80's said the 88 model engine is unique, all oil feeds in the heads were changed for 89. Lucky me.

 

Mine's an 88 too, so we can share some pain. Man I need to finish that bike. So many projects...

 

Let me see if I can figure out some issues that may help you in the future!

I took a break from the engine and started working on the fuel petcock, which of course is weird also. K&L only sells the vacuum diaphragm for it and not the internal gasket for it. They have kit # 18-2701 but they don;t tell you it is just the diaphragm kit, not the round valve gasket. There are a bunch of unhappy comments on the Ebay vendor's site that sells this kit. It is described as a "Complete Kit" but it sure as heck is not.



The Kit DOES NOT come with the below valve gasket. I measured the OD and it is about 27.44 mm, and about 3 mm thick. I am sending emails to vendors on Ebay to see if anyone carries that size.

 

Look for a All Balls or Moose Racing rebuild kit for the actual valve.

 

it wouldnt be too awfully messy to run the bike briefly at low rpm with the rear valve cover OFF to look for chain or tensioner problems. might help locate the noise.

ive seen similar possibly identical 4-hole circular gaskets on many other petcocks of that era.

you set proper valve clearences, waitin 4 that compression test now ?

 

S-man, the compression check was inconclusive because of my crappy gauge. I did do a leak down test (with another crappy HF gauge) and it said it was in the GREEN, which is 20% leak. I did this cold, so I am surmising that at least the compression is serviceable.

I have never heard a tensioner failure noise before so I have no idea what it sounds like. I may just fire it up with the cam covers off as you said and see what I see. It is really hard to see anything in the valley of this engine due to the size of it.

 

be ready for an oil bath if you do that

 

Yeah for real....the more I think about this sounds like an ill advised move

 

Failing tensioners usually make more noise on the RPM decel after giving a really good rev out and chopping the throttle. The torque wave goes up the chain and the failing tensioner can't compensate. It's usually a heavy rattle, but can be a constant knock-type sound when really bad. But still the worsening RPM decel rattle/knock is the tell-tale.

 

It is making all that noise just like you say.

I will be taking the rear tensioner out first, it seemed to make the most noise. It is BAD.

More to come.