FZRSupport: the FZROnline Archive

NOTE I RENAMED THIS THREAD. NATE HAS HELPED ME WITH THE PAINTING. THE BOTTOM HAS THE NEW PICS

I'm thinking about painting the engine on the FZR for 2 reasons. Protect it and it goes with the new paint scheme. Long story short I know a while back I saw on a rebuild someone had taken their motor out of the bike and painted it on a trailer.

Anyone have those pics. I'm slowly making a list of things I need to cover off before I paint. Taping off the exhaust holes, carb boots and etc. I just want to look at those photos for some reference. And then if anyone has suggestions too that is good. I've painted car engines multiple times but never an alum engine.

Chris.

I didn't do it on a trailer, but I pulled it out and taped everything off.






And then it turned out out pretty nice.




Luckily I redid the yellow covers. Man it was ugly! Spend a very long time degreasing. I used engine degreaser and multiple brushes. Kerosene will break up any grease still left. Chem tool works very well also.

After that I started taping. Take your time. It took me a long time but I was very happy with the results. If you get irritated at the time being spent taping, stop and go do something else and come back. Don't fight the taping. I used a #11 X-acto knife blade and I changed the blade frequently. This is how I trim tape for powder coating as well. You will get a very clean edge as compared to razor blades.

You can also leave the covers on and paint the motor and then pull the covers and strip them and paint them....or send them for powder!

It's a long process overall but can definitely set the bike off.

Thanks Nate. I will probably paint the covers and then use some left over orange for the yamaha on the stator cover and trim on the clutch cover. Did you leave the bottom half silver or go ahead and paint the whole Engine?

Chris.

I painted the bottom half "wheel silver" from dupli-color. That way I knew if I was leaking oil sooner!

Ok so I started to clean the engine a little better so that I can paint it and I figure I'm going to try and tackle the valve shims. Long story short when I took the carb boots off to look at my valves they are nasty. So My question is.. how far do I have to take the engine apart to get the valves out so that I can properly clean them. I don't want to just spray cleaner down there and let it sit on the piston head. The second part to this is that when I looked in cyl 1 I saw green liquid on top of the valve, and since I didn't use any green cleaner I can only guess it is coolant. Which makes since because cyl 1 was the cyl that I had problems with it running cool or not fully firing.

So questions.
1. How far down do I need to take the engine to get the valves out.
2. If I'm going to take the valve cover off to do the shims I should probably just replace the valve cover gasket.
3. If I have coolant on the valve then I probably have a head gasket leak and should just take the engine down to there and replace the gasket since I will probably just replave the V.C. gasket.
4. Can either of these gaskets be replaced with the gasket paste crap? $140 is a bit out of the question right now.

Gaskets are like 35 and 72 $ on bike bandit.
Item 14 on this link is the VC gasket http://www.bikebandit.com/houseofmotorc ... #sch132776

Item 12 is the cyl gasket.

Basically you are looking at a top end rebuild. You'll be pulling the valve head off to really clean the valves. That will open up the pistons too so you could give them a good scrubbing if you wanted to as well.

I would replace the VC gasket and you'll have to replace the head gasket obviously. I would go either of these two routes.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Yamaha-1989-90-FZR6 ... 336379efcb
http://cgi.ebay.com/Yamaha-FZR600-1989- ... 2eb3ce7970


The Vesrah is the nicer kit obviously so it costs a bit more. You're going to need a new peanut cover and clutch cover gasket too. If you take the water lines off you'll need new o-rings for those so the kit makes more sense. You'll have extra parts but perhaps a member on here will need them and buy them off you.

I would never use the gasket maker stuff unless you were using it as a temp fix. It just makes things horrible to deal with later on.

I think several of us have reused the valve cover gasket successfully - myself included. If it comes off in one piece it should be OK. Use the real gaskets for all of these applications.

Thanks Nate and Rt. I kinda figured that the sealant crap wouldn't be a good idea. Just asking for reassurance, which you guys have now done.

Thanks for the link too nate. I bought the peanut, clutch, oil pan, stator gaskets last year in a deal with the dealership. So if I get one of the ones from ebay I'll probably just sell them on here. Or maybe a trade for some valve shims.

Also just to double check the first link you gave me was a gasket kit for 89-90. But the other one said 89-99 so I'm guessing there wasn't a big change in the carbs for the FZR.

Chris.

Adding these pics so that later on I can do a write up. Look at all the pretty carbon.



Soooooo.... if I have the machine shop bore the jugs out, all I would really have to do is get new rings, that are the same mm over? I've never really honed an engine out. Maybe I just need to put her together and get back to riding.

Chris.

Hone and Bore are two different operations.

'Hone' - yes; re-ring (same size) and rock on (check your clearances).

'Bore' - no, you'll need new pistons & rings

DonTZ125 wrote:Hone and Bore are two different operations.

'Hone' - yes; re-ring (same size) and rock on (check your clearances).

'Bore' - no, you'll need new pistons & rings

And honing is just taking everything back to spec. Like if your clearance has changed. ie. You have warpage on your head and you sand it back down.

Chris.

Honing is simply etching (grinding) the sides of the cylinders after boring has occurring OR refreshing the cylinders if they are not badly scored or worn. How you hone is very important. The result needs to be a cross-hatch pattern.

kilika2 wrote:And honing is just taking everything back to spec.

You will never get back to OEM spec since even honing is removing metal. However; it is not removing as much metal as boring which results in new pistons.

kilika2 wrote:You have warpage on your head and you sand it back down

Usually just milled, although some shops may just sand an aluminum head down if its in decent shape. The problem with sanding is that the head is not mounted in a jig and relies heavily on the operators skill. You can easily taper a head sanding incorrectly.

Thanks Darrin. Duane helped me out with this but it's good info to have on here if anyone ever reads through this.

Chris.