Woot! This thing would definitely be a 500lb sculpture in my apartment if it wasn't for the creative and inquisitive folks on this list. I had to step out to Danken (great little auto parts store on Morgan Avenue if you ever get stranded in Brooklyn) to pick up a little LED flashlight so I can see what's going on in that tiny little hole...
So, steeling myself for tricky job, I lit up that little hole and...NOTHING. There is no helicoil, NO THREADS,
nothing in the hole (??!!) but a few tiny thread shavings. I can only think of two possible causes for this and both of them are uh, not good. My first (and highly preferable) theory is that the bastards at Cycle Therapy in Manhattan (I stripped this bolt on the side of the road on 149th st, so my options were fairly limited) never even put a helicoil in there in the first place, and just threw some liquid gasket or something down there and called it a day. My second (nightmare) theory is that the little helicoil somehow managed to shake loose down there and ended up pinballing around the camshaft,engine and creating all kinds of nasty metallic havoc.
Here's were the helicoil should have been:
And now for some PO/lazy mechanic weirdness:
Yeah, that's right the CUT bolt on the left has fewer threads and was used for the helicoil.
OK, so obviously I want to rule out the doomsday scenario here, so let me describe what happened when my bike died:
I sprayed carb cleaner directly down the fuel line to the carbs and ran the engine for a few minutes to flush it out.
I sprayed some carb cleaner into the airbox (Dumb, I know) and ran it for a minute or two with the airbox OFF on a dusty ass Brooklyn street.
I put my air filter back on, (dirty) and put the tank back on with a fairly dirty inline fuel filter in place. (are you noticing a trend here?)
Plugs were dry and sooty, which seems to fit right in with the dirty air filter, dirty fuel line, and probably dirty carb...did I mention my tank still has a crumbling kreme liner in it?
Noticed a slight film of oil surrounding the dreaded bolt, so I tightened it a bit. No torque wrench...queasy feeling as it just kept turning.
Started her up and it sounded weak and boggy, like it was running on 3 cylinders, then it began to buck and then it died. I noticed oil was practically spurting out of the bolt. Tried to start it again and it bucked a little, and barely ran with full choke. There was no grinding, or rattly noises so I am praying that the doomsday scenario never actually came to pass.
Some back story on the Cycle Therapy "fix": When I first tried to pick the bike up from their shop I started it up and it sounded super weak, oil was spurting out of the bolt. I gave it back to them and I picked it up a week later and the oil leak was (almost) gone. It has continued to leak very slightly since then.
Two months after the helicoil I laid her down at 30 or so, on the left side, helicoiled bolt is on the right. Sent her to a different mechanic for a tune up, and she ran pretty well after that for a few weeks, then I didn't have time to ride for 2 weeks or so, and she bogged down with throttle and seemed to be surging/missing (in heavy traffic on fifth avenue right by Rockefeller Center).
There is a THIRD (grassy knoll) theory that the more I look at the problem the more I think is what actually happened: The second mechanic for some unfathomable(malicious?) reason, decided to toss the helicoil. He was a big fan of liquid gasket, and there was a bunch of liquid gasket threads hanging off the cylinder head cover, cylinder cover joints and
THE &%^#$ BOLT!!!!Another reason I think this is what happened: there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of clearance above the cam for the helicoil to make it's way into the engine. Also, wouldn't I have heard some kind of metal on metal grinding noises if a helicoil had gotten ground up by the cam?
The only thing that is making me doubt this grassy knoll theory is that the cam does not spin so easily when I turn the bolt on the alternator to advance it. (still a noob here...) it spins freely for half a turn or so, then there is a little resistance...
OK, can anybody rule out the doomsday scenario entirely? Do I have to fish around for this helicoil? Speaking of, considering the hole has (theoretically) already been helicoiled, then the helicoil removed, do I have to JB weld the new helicoil on or something?