Hello,
I recently bought a near completed project, K2 with K4 engine. The bike ran and sounded great. Looked nice but hoped I hadn’t made a mistake as it needed some general work to bring it all together, tyres, and to be registered. The real worries were the motor was noisy, and it blew a lot of whitish smoke. Hoped it was camchain noise and figured I could get the top end done (and maybe I could live with the smoke for a while.) I realised after I bought it that most of the noise goes away when the clutch lever is pulled in. Negotiated a price that I hoped wasn’t unbelievably stupid, considering 1, I really liked the bike, and 2, a top end rebuild probably had to be done. I had actually walked away from it after making what I thought was a low offer, although not as low as I had considered offering. He came back to me and I eventually bought it.
The bike had sat for eight years, after a breakdown. Turned out it had 2 damaged valves. I spoke to the mechanic who fixed that. He had also checked the motor over without pulling it apart, bores, camchain, end float or whatever they do. He said that he told the owner that, to the best of his knowledge, it was good to go, although compression was down on one cyl to 120 and up to 145 on the others. However it was smoking when I saw it.
Being unregistered I only had several short rides before and after purchase. I got it registered then discovered that after about 15 minutes riding at low speed the oil light flickered then stayed on. This was complicated by the idle rising from 1100 to 2000 and pipe 3 wasn’t as hot as the others. When the bike cooled the light was off after idle
When I dropped the sump plate, I discovered many small pieces of metal of various sizes and one piece about an inch or more long, half inch wide and about 1/4 inch thick. You can see it in the pictures I will add later. Smooth rounded outside, inside a torn area and a hole drilled up the middle. I can feel some grit in a sludge on bottom of the oil tank, although the oil filter folds didn’t seem to have any metal in them. So, suddenly it went from “maybe it won’t be too bad” to “that’s gonna hurt!”
Finally to my question. Obviously no one can tell what it is like without pulling it apart, but I am wondering if it is worth pulling apart after that junk circulating through the motor. I was told it gets pretty expensive when you get into the bottom end of these things. Would I be better off trying to buy another motor (which may be as bad as mine).
It’s complicated somewhat by the fact that the two K2 bikes I have, and a spare, damaged motor that came with the bike, are all K4 engines, and the motor in my old K2 is probably flogged to death. If I am going to spend a lot of money on a motor I wouldn’t mind getting a K2 engine, to complement either of the bikes.
So that’s where the whole sorry tale sits at the moment. I will check out the other 2 engines. I know this is long, just wanted to paint the picture and give as much info as I could. Any thoughts, other than gullible, naive, stupid, is this bloke for real, etc?
Thanks
