REALLY?????!!!!!!!!

[robin1731]

Another good one. Guy brings his 1981 Kawasaki KZ1000 LTD in. Needs a lot. Head gasket leaking, fork seals leaking, carbs rebuilt, fuel valve rebuilt, chain and sprockets. Along with some other stuff. He brought another "parts" bike to swap out some stuff that was broken on his, gauge bracket for instance. Ok, that's cool, and he says the parts bike is mine when I'm done. OK.

I start in swapping parts from the parts bike first. Because that's what I can get done quick and easy. Had to order a lot of parts for all the rest. Stat to take the head off to replace the head gasket and rebuild the head while it's off. Pull the cam cover and you can see both exhaust cam caps (holders) look like they had been a bit warm. Pull all the caps off and all 8 cam bearing surfaces on the cams show wear. Some with grooves you can see. Also most of the bearings are pretty well shot. So you know, that is hard to do on one of these.

Pull the head and get it rebuilt and back together. Waiting on gasket kit to put it back on. Do some other things to get ready for gaskets and seals which are on the way. Ordered all the parts last Friday.

Plan on dropping the oil pan to inspect the oil pump pickup to make sure it isn't plugged. Drain the oil. Get less than 1 quart of oil out of it. These take about 3.7 quarts.

Well, there's your problem.

Oil pump screen was good. Oil pan had a lot of crud in it. Go figure.

Lucky for him the cams and cam bearings in the other engine are in very good shape.

.

[77Gowing]

Reminds me when I was 9 yrs old. Dear ole dad was more than pleased to "let me" learn how to gas up the lawn mover so I could cut the grass. I was just so proud of what a Big boy I was. Well for two months I cut the grass and all was fine. One morning Dad asked me to help him load the mower into the trunk of his old Ford so he could drive over to the next town to cut his vacant rental properties' grass. Later that afternoon he came back and he asked me round to the back of that old Ford. He looked pretty unhappy and I figured I was going to get it and good. He opened the trunk, and there was the mower in parts, crank, piston, broken rod, head etc. He started in yelling at me, why didn't you ever bother to check the oil?!!! And I said "But dad I did everything you taught me to do to work the lawn mower and you never said anything about OIL!" He paused to stop the veins from popping out of his forehead and then said, "Ok lets rebuild this engine and I'll show you how to put it all back together." First thing he showed me was where to put and check the oil, it was an old 2.5 hp Briges & Stratton engine. I'll never forget the look on his face when I told him he was he one that taught me how to work the lawn mower. OIL Dad? What Oil?

[chewy999]

My ex's youngest son had a mini for his first car, and one day he phoned up to say he had broken down. He said he thought it needed oil so I took some with me. Found him at the roadside, and first thing I did was check the oil. The dipstick was dry as a bone!
I then started to fill the engine through the filler, hoping there wasn't to much damage and he could at least get home. I then noticed he had a puzzled look on his face.
I asked him why and he said ''when are you going to put some oil in there?"
"Where?" I asked, now getting puzzled myself.
"There!" he said pointing to the dipstick tube!

Turns out he'd been checking his oil, and 'topping up' by putting oil in through the dipstick tube! It would only take a little to get a reading, while the (old) engine would use more.

[salukispeed]

My pop was good about showing us kids how to check the fluids as we got to that age. So we did the same with our kids. So many kids/people miss this and have no clue. My daughter was the go to kid at college when her friends had trouble with there cars. lots of vehicles die an early death and strand the drivers from lack of fluids and maintenance.

[Gowing]

Reminds me of a friend who used our small out board boat one morning and couldn't figure out why it quit.
Did you guess? Yep it's a two-stroke and nope, when he put gas in it, he didn't mix oil with the gas.
Can you imagine how it looked inside. Seized pistons and all.

[JSBail]

Years ago my oldest son owned a Saturn, I can't remember why it was that we had it apart but it was an all day job and when we were done and he started it up the engine was making all kinds of noise coming from the balancer which was wobbling around. He had put the balancer on but I hadn't told him about the keyway he had to line up so he essentially forced the balancer on which shoved the woodruff key on the crank snout up into the crank timing sprocket/gear which cracked the timing gear ...... which meant we had to take the whole thing back apart again. I almost went through the roof but I couldn't take it out on my son because he didn't know and the reason he didn't know was because I didn't inform him of that keyway. I still wasn't happy about the situation but I knew that having a temper fit wasn't going to help and it wasn't going to fix itself so i just kept my mouth shut, took it back apart, got the parts we needed then showed my son how to correctly put it back together.

[Don R]

My Daughter was almost done at college and on her way home one day when she called me at work. Her olds cutlass had died on the road coming home. I went home, hooked up the car trailer and evicted the racecar. When I got there I checked the oil, she said she knew it had plenty because just yesterday she put 3 1/2 quarts in it. I explained the damage was already done and it just ran as long as it could. I knew it had an oil leak and she didn't have money to spend so I bottled the old race car oil and put it in the trunk in case she needed any and was short on funds. I figured 3 race old Mobil one was better than no oil. Someone still needs to put it in the motor. We put a junkyard 3.0 in it and it's still going after 2 more owners.

She drives my racecar now and is good at hearing engine noises. Last race she heard a bearing squeal while warming up and shut it off. It turned out the track equipment behind her was dragging the track to put down rubber and wear in the traction compound. She heard that over the exhaust noise. Maybe it was a lesson well learned.