I guess I lucked out. The '86 VF500F that I bought for salvage turns out to have a decent engine. I got it to fire by spraying fuel into the carb throats, but it would not stay running. I removed the carbs, they were a mess (see pix). Cleaned them up, reinstalled & the engine fired up and sounds great, no ticks, clunks or thuds, no smoke. #1 carb fuel screw was not responding, got lucky and got the bowl off without removing the carb assembly. The pilot had picked up a bit of crud, cleaned it out again, reinstalled, engine now is very smooth and responsive. Pulled the rear cam cover today and found that the cams look practically like new & the rocker clearances were all 4 right at .006". :whoo: Still need to check the top end on the two front cylinders, hope to find no problems there. Since the '86 engine has significant improvements over the previous models, I will be putting it on the bench, give it a good going over and swap it into my '85 over the winter.
Nice find Creaky. It's nice to have lot's of spare parts around and this engine seems like a good transplant candidate. One of the most fun parts of my 500 project was doing a frame up rebuild and picking the best parts of the 2.5 bikes I had (mostly in boxes and bins!). Sounds like you have some great winter fun ahead!
