XJ650 Starting issues

If using a factory style oil cooler, the ADAPTER PLATE attaches to the engine crankcase via a special UNION BOLT (which has external threads which screw into the crankcase, and internal threads that accept the finned filter cover (or, in your case, the threaded hollow stud which holds the spin-on flat plate).

The adapter plate is going to add about 2-1/2" of additional projection (away from the engine, towards the header pipes) to the system.

The threaded stud that we provide with the spin-on kit is not long enough to reach and secure both the spin-on plate and the adapter plate.......you must use the union bolt.

 

So the hollow stud will have to come out to be replaced with a union bolt, and it will take 2.5 inches more?

Welp, I guess that will absolutely be a problem for the future. Everything seems fine for now but 1. I don't know if there is 2.5" of clearance with these headers, unless I can find a way to make these headers spread out 15mm wider (or get new headers made) 2. removing the bolt when everything is fine currently is absolutely something I am putting off till a later date.

 

I took it for a 20 mile group ride tonight. I definitely need more practice. I feel like my center of balance is off compared to the Honda Rebel 250 I had started out on. With these euro bars, my stance is forward and I keep putting pressure on my right hand and it keeps falling asleep. It gets a little better if I sit up and let my back support me instead. I did some math and I've put on 150 miles on this since getting the bike.

Couple comments:

I swear that there is the whistling sound, around 5000 rpms, though I don't really ever get it above 5000 rpms in any gear (4000 in first gear and it sounds so unhappy and loud that I will move into second gear asap, also with the fact 1st gear does not move very fast...I wish you could go faster in first gear without the engine revving so high, because it feels a little like the Rebel, don't bother spending any time in 1st gear except from a stop), Usually I will get it to 5000, and shift into a higher gear instead so I can hover around 3-4k rpm. She's 44 years old and I wanna baby the hell out of her (7 years older than me). I hear this is normal, however.

Since doing the valves back in June, which were out of spec, (6/8 of them needed to be decreased by 1 shim each, except Intake #4, needed to decrease by 3 shims!! When I checked the compression 1-3 were great, within 5psi of each other, but 4 was still quite low: 140.3 vs the highest, cylinder 1 at 152.7, a 12.4 psi difference, when max tolerance is 14psi. So technically it's okay, but that does stand out. A leakdown test was later done, and I was advised all of the cylinders across the board were under 10% and this was good, though I have no notes about where the, potentially, up to 9%? leakage was going... ) I hadn't ridden the bike between getting the bike back, except one time in a parade, and that's a bit too many distractions going on to really focus on the bike and how it's behaving.

Anyways, now that I've had her back, I've put about 50 miles on her, and it's given me some time to think about how the bike feels and what noises she's making and what's expected, what's not expected, etc.

She runs HOT, after the 20 mile ride you could feel the absolute heat radiating off her. It was about 82F with about 77-85% humidity, and we parked to talk and the bike was steaming. Either from cooking the air off the headers, and the humidity, or somehow from the cable lube I had tried to squirt a little bit down into the choke cable (rather unsuccessfully because I don't have that cable lube tool). I don't know if it's that's normal, with an air cooled bike, or if it's something more.

She also still makes a sound that sounds like something is "spinning" in the engine. Is it the cam chain? I don't know. It has an automatic chain tensioner, which afaik you shouldn't have to adjust, but maybe you do? I saw a few light scrapes on the inside of the valve cover, which would make me think at some point in the past the chain got loose and hit the underside. When I was doing the valve adjustment, I checked the tension via very gentle back and forth eighth of a turn and pulling up on the chain with my fingers, it felt really tight.

When I brought this up to my mechanic friend, they suggested that it could be the camshaft and the valves and that it's just a noisy bike. Tonight, I came across a post here, to someone else, saying that when the valves are properly adjusted it "sounds like a sewing machine" and yeah, I guess it kinda sounds like that? Been a while since I thought about what a sewing machine sounds like but I guess so?

I guess I'm just worried that it's a "bad" sound.

Also, I'm not sure if it was the wind, or if it was the road or me, but as I was getting to 50-55mph the bike felt a little..."wobbly" not like a wobble of death or anything, I've seen those, just more like...floaty? My ex said she took it up to 70 and it positively rips, and says it behaves differently past 50 or so, compared to before 50, so maybe that's what I've experienced.

 

I also liked that when I let my friend use my bike, to ride up and down the road to hear the noise I was hearing, they immediately revbombed the neighborhood. Me and my ex had a laff

 

I checked this a couple days later after I wiped it all off, and I'm noticing what looks like oil around it again. The bike tends to just sit on it's kickstand, And this is on the right side, so the oil is leaning away. It's not leaking nearly enough to cause a puddle on the ground, it's probably like a pinch of oil, that hasn't yet made enough surface tension to drop on the ground.

How would I fix this? Do I just tighten the Allen key thing here, or do I have to lay the bike on its left, unscrew it, and replace the o-ring on the opposite side? Or is it more involved than that?

 

Kick stand or the kick stand in small hole will be fine.
I wouldn't tighten it, but remove and inspect. Over tightening will break the outer easily.
If I could find one in my pile of bits and send a pic you'd understand but alas...
Have a look at the third post down in this thread. It shows how the plug can break. https://xjbikes.com/forums/threads/oil-drain-plug-on-side-of-crankcase.73198

 

Yeah I've been scouring the forums and my 80's official manual and it doesn't even reference it. Only information I can find about it is there is an o-ring, and it's a plug for the "oil gallery" and that Len (in 2008 anyways) thinks it's around at most 8ft lbs.

I guess I'm asking for more specifics:

1. what is it?
2. how do I address it?
3. what is the torque setting?

 

If it's an o-ring, nice and snug is good and the o-ring will keep it from backing out.

 

Yes, it is an o-ring on a plug that plugs both ends of the oil gallery that is bored under the crankshaft.

I would just make sure that it is not one of the crank seals leaking and finding its way out from under the crank side covers.

it’s a 20mm hex so it can stand quite a bit of torque, but don’t go nuts. About 3 ugga duggas.

if it is tight and you are not being deceived by some other leak, then it is pretty cheap and easy to replace that o-ring.

 

Now that's military-grade specific!

 

both crank side covers have brand new gaskets on them from Len, yes, even though the right side cover doesn't do anything. It's not seemingly leaking from that area, but I can check tomorrow. If the crank seal is leaking, what happens then? I believe that spot is "sealed"? tbh it is not leaking that much, just enough that I notice it's slightly "wet" and not enough that it's really getting on the ground. Like, mild condensation amounts, is what we're talkin about here.

So I'm assuming without draining the oil, the procedure would be to buy new o-ring, lay bike down on it's left, use 20mm hex to unscrew it (carefully), replace oring, torque it to like maybe 3-5ft lbs and stand up the bike and check for leaks? Do I have that right?

 

Yes, it should be pretty straightforward.

You will lose some oil, but shouldn’t be too much.

 

I actually went out and looked at the bike, the side cover itself is bone dry.

I can't really tell where it is coming from cuz it's not obvious. It's either coming from the gallery plug, or possibly from the bolt that is immediately next to it, the bolt on the bottom of the crankcase because it's a little oily/greasy near the cavity slightly behind the plug.


Again, it's not obvious because it's not pooling. Everywhere else is bone dry. the only place I notice it collects is on that little raised cylinder immediately below the plug.

 

Degrease it and check after each ride.
Should become obvious.

 

Spray some foot powder on the area...... it will reveal the leak path.

 

The bike didn't want to start... I had to put it on res and wiggle the bike back and forth, and then she started. I had tried slapping the carbs and checked the flow from the petcock, I turned it to prime and it started to leak around the petcock so I turned it back off and it stopped leaking immediately.

 

This is the inside of the gallery plug. I’m not sure if you can tell from the photos, but the o-ring is pretty flattened and sacked out. If you told me this was leaking I would not be surprised at all. 40+ years is a long time- what do you expect?

Also, the more I think about it I think I would take it up to 20~25 lbft and put some blue loctite on it. Just make sure it’s good and snug. If it fell out while you’re riding that would be a bad time.

 

Yes, these things have "buzzy" zone around 5,000-5,500 RPM. Must be some resonant frequency or something. That's normal. Mildly annoying, but normal.

Yes, they are a bit noisy. Kind of like an old air cooled VW or Porsche. They say that it should sound like a sewing machine - so normal movement of gears and chains and whatnot. If there are things that sound bad like grinding or squealing then that might be a problem.

 

I guess I never really experienced it before because the bike's valve clearance was way off the first time I rode it (not much, maybe an hour) and didn't know better. I did the valve clearance before the carbs got adjusted a few months ago and I've only put on maybe 160~ miles or so in total this year, 100 of those since the valve adjustment.

I don't know if I need to adjust the automatic chain tensioner or not

 

I found a person who rides an XS1100 in the area!! Super stoked

 

Well I just got back from a ride, and she was acting really weird, having trouble idling.

Turns out it looks like the oil seal behind the timing plate has failed. It's starting to leak past the gasket on that side

 

See attachment

I was riding and at times I noticed that my shifter felt slippery, and I found oil on my left boot after I got home. I had thought the rubber for the shifter came off. She was behaving weird in the last 10 minutes of my ride home, I'd go to shift into 2nd, and the neutral light would stay on, and I'd push it harder, and the neutral light went away and then I'd let up on the clutch. It would be fine otherwise. I'd get to an intersection, and she'd drop below 1050rpm with no choke (because she was warmed up enough, no point), as if she was going to die, so I would rev her a little bit, which usually fixes it, but it didn't, so I'd give her more choke, and she'd climb to 3000 rpms and I let off the choke and the rpms plummeted back down and potentially stall a few times, and I'd have to fight for her to stay alive, eventually opting to just have the choke on a little bit more than I wanted to.

So I got home, parked the bike, talked with my friend who rode with me back from our biker hangout, went back to my bike, whipped out my phone and started looking all over to see if it was leaking from the right side oil gallery plug, which again, if there was a leak, it wasn't obvious. I moved to the left side of the bike and immediately noticed the bottom of the left cover was "wet" (weather was dry) and then noticed what you see in the attachment, and there was a few drops on the pavement.

It would make sense that the oil seal behind the timing plate failed, though I haven't removed the side cover yet, it's very obviously leaking past the gasket. Oil getting into the timing plate components would also make sense why it was suddenly running poorly, making my shifter slippery, and getting oil on my left boot. I don't think oil and electricity work well together

I was reading up on it and it sounds like nowadays, you don't have to split the case to fix this, since the newer oil seals don't have that "lip" that the old ones do. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like the steps would be:
1. drain the oil
2. remove the left side cover
3. remove the timing plate (I am unsure if this means I will have to re-adjust the timing after or if I can just unscrew stuff to get at the oil seal and put it back...)
4. carefully remove the oil seal with a pick or something?
5. pop the new oil seal back in
6. put the timing plate back
7 . gently scuff the surface for the gasket and install a new gasket
8. reinstall the left side cover
9. refill the oil
10. check for leaks

or am I completely off base or am I missing something?

 

I seriously doubt that would work.
The seal is clamped between the cases.
Check everywhere else.
Oil flows backwards, make sure it isn't originating from your oil filter or something at the front.

 

Gimme a minute to get on the ground and go out and look, but I'm pretty confident it's from the "crankshaft flange OIL SEAL". I'll take some more photos if I can.

 

There is a video on the catalog that someone demonstrates, on an xj1100, digging out the old oil seal, and installing a new one.

As you can see there's some like grease around the spin-on filter, but I don't see any active leaks.

It almost looks like there is a little hole or a divot in one of the attachments where the oil is leaking from. It's really obvious to me that it's from this area, and some of the oil has flown back and got on the shifter and the bottom of the shifter cover

I looked everywhere that I could around the front of the bike on both sides, and it's just this side.

 

That is weird.
That pic looks dry to me except the oil on the shifter of course.
That divet is a drain hole. Oil wouldn't affect the sensors in there normally at all.
Pull the cover and check before planning any other adventure with the crank seal I reckon.
Gasket on that is to keep water/dirt out so not as hard core as oil.

 

I'll do that tomorrow after work, it's midnight atm lol

I'll make sure to post pictures here. I was waiting for my shipment from Len to remove the alternator cover, and clean the rotor surface and replace the brushes with new ones, and a new gasket there too. That's what I had planned on doing tomorrow after work...now I have a new thing to figure out.

I should also pull the plugs and see if they got fouled again, that stalling behavior was very weird.

 

Last time I ended up with oil on the shifter like that it was the head gasket.
But that was pretty obvious... Obviously!

 

I promise I am not seeing oil from the head gasket, I've been checking around the valve cover, and all of the fins, which I have somewhat cleaned best I could with a little pokey brush thing, a few weeks back, and it looks bone dry.

It seems it's "stopped" leaking at the moment, but there's an obvious oil spot on the ground where it was dripping.

 

Indeed. You'd know if it was that, oil everywhere... Pants included!

The little gear shifter seal leaks sometimes also.
At any rate. Tomorrow!

 

Looking at that video ( & ), I haven't been able to ascertain if you need to re-do the timing if you unscrew the timing plate to get at the oil seal. it looked like on the XJ1100 he just unscrewed the middle screw, and then the two screws holding it on.

I guess I would assume that after you replace the oil seal, you just screw it back on...but??? I don't know for sure. Does anyone know with a modicum of confidence?

also: I will pull the plugs and look at them to see their color, but I have a side question: if they do end up being fouled again, that's probably a carb issue, right? Could it be from running the enrichment circuit longer than the bike wants you to? Usually I don't have to crank the enrichment circuit to get the bike to start at all, or if I do I might just move the choke ever so slightly that it's obvious it is "on" because the revs go up, and after a few minutes of riding/idling I turn it off (my usual process is to 1. put helmet on 2. turn bike on 3. as it's idling I put my glasses on and gloves and back it out of my parking spot 4. pull out of the parking lot in 1st gear only. once I get about 500-1000 feet down the main road I shut it off) I don't think I'm rushing the bike this way.

I don't know if it is related to the oil leaking or not, but on my way back besides the weird shifting issues I noticed on my way back (clutch pulled in fully, move shift toe up, neutral light comes on, stays on, I don't let go of the clutch and I move my toe harder and the light goes away, then I let out the clutch and it's fine. It wasn't doing this behavior on the ride down, but it was doing it more often on the ride back.) as I was pulling to an intersection the bike acts like it's spluttering, idle is going down, so I give it some more fuel via enrichment, the rpm climbs up, I lower it a little bit and the rpms drop rapidly. Cue this back and forth, behavior, and eventually I just leave the choke up higher to keep it from dying, and turning the choke off once I get into second gear.

I've also noticed some weird behavior lately with this bike, I was in first gear and in a parking lot and I went over some crappy pavement and the bike kinda "clunked" a bit while going over the holes and when this happened it was like the power of the bike dropped almost instantly, though it didn't stall. It wasn't like just letting go of the throttle because of "oops I rode over a big bump" it was like the bike just lost power delivery? I was able to get it back in both instances but...

The other thing I was noticing on the way back, I would downshift and the engine braking would kick in, and I would engine brake as I was coming to a stop and I felt something "rubbing" I wasn't sure what it was, when I noticed it I pressed and released the rear brake and the front brake to make sure I wasn't accidentally engaging them, but that wasn't the issue.

 

Yep. Definitely behind this timing plate

So I guess the answer is it's going to involve redoing the timing. I suppose I could try to mark off the exact placement of where that spinning part, is located, But that doesn't sound like the right way to do things.

 

Rotor is dirty but otherwise the brushes look good. You can see the wearmark on the existing brushes, so I'm going to probably just clean the rotor and hold onto the brushes for later

I don't see any leaks here, so I don't think I have to disassemble the alternator to replace anything (yet)

 

Actually in looking at this, wouldn't the way to do this be to hand rotate the engine till it is exactly top dead center, for timing plate, And then to remove the pickup coil assembly?

As long as the timing plate doesn't move while you're unscrewing the Allen bolt, it should just be a matter of putting the timing plate back where it was?

 

The crankshaft is keyed for the timing rotor

 

Right, I'm saying that based on the attachments I posted, which are based on the manual, that looks to be the instructions on how to uninstall the timing plate and reinstall it. So as long as I follow those directions it should be fine right?

 

Upon further research it looks like I have missed a step; to verify the timing after removing the timing plate assembly, doing the oil seal removal and reinstall, and reinstalling the timing plate back to TDC, I'm gonna have to remove the valve cover and rotate the engine by hand to check the dots on the camshafts to make sure those match up with the TDC mark with the pointer. UGH. I hate having to remove the tank lol

 

You can't really go wrong. The pin in the crank goes in the reluctor and the plate has very little play on the mount screws.

 

Hrm.

All my shops are weeks out. Maybe I can do it on my own then?

I'm noticing another problem on top of all this, so as I'm looking at everything, I decide to pull the plugs. The technician said that all the plugs were looking good, but based on its weird behavior the other night, I wanted to see. Plugs one, two and four, are somewhat sooty, but not oily. Plug number three, looks a little bit too white for me, but I showed it to a bunch of other techs, and they said that it looks almost perfect. The bike is currently not starting, but I think I've tried so many times that it has discharged the battery and I need to charge it back up.

The oil filler smells like oil, and does not smell burnt.

 

Side question:

Looks like the alternator gasket goes "behind" the wires that come out of the stator. Trying to figure out how I'm supposed to replace the gasket for the alternator. I assume I'll have to pull the stator out, put the gasket on, then replace the stator?

Can I do this without removing the starter motor, or do I have to do that too?

I also assume I should disconnect the battery before touching the stator or any components inside.

 

Based on some youtubes I watched, looks like the stator is routinely stuck within the alternator housing, but as long as I can gingerly remove the stator without bending the wires too much, I should be able to slip the new gasket behind it and put it back on. I didn't see an oil leak so I don't believe the rotor needs to get pulled (though the inside of the cover has a few black splotches on it from...something?), just need to clean the rotor surface and put everything back. I do want to polish the alternator cover while it's off, however. I guess I could replace the JIS screws because I hate those things, but not sure how much I care right now about that lol. Might be something I bother with when I actually replace the brushes but they have TONS of material. I'll take a toothbrush to the brushes and a microfiber cloth.

if I have to pull the starter motor to get the stator off though, I'm gonna be annoyed, because if I have to pull the starter motor then I'll do a rebuild of it and clean that too.