07 fe550 engine questions, valves and main bearings

hi just bought 07 fe550 has 55 hours 1977km 2 owners, had major service 400km ago, valve clearances checked all the checks everything ok.

nw just wondering are the 07 valves titanium or stainless, do the have big issues with valves wearing out in seats.

also on the husaberg website it says to change the main crank bearings, conrod bearing and balancer bearings at 60 hours, do you think this is nesessary if so no worries i do it but could i push it to 65 70 hours.

the 07 has larger crank bearings than earlier models so are they just saying to this as a precaution or will it blow up on 60 hours haha.

also any other things i can do or should do or make it even more awesome than it is, cos its bloody ripper of a bike.

sickd said:

hi just bought 07 fe550 has 55 hours 1977km 2 owners, had major service 400km ago, valve clearances checked all the checks everything ok.

nw just wondering are the 07 valves titanium or stainless, do the have big issues with valves wearing out in seats.

also on the husaberg website it says to change the main crank bearings, conrod bearing and balancer bearings at 60 hours, do you think this is nesessary if so no worries i do it but could i push it to 65 70 hours.

the 07 has larger crank bearings than earlier models so are they just saying to this as a precaution or will it blow up on 60 hours haha.

also any other things i can do or should do or make it even more awesome than it is, cos its bloody ripper of a bike.

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Stainless valves. No issue with the seats so to speak.
The 60 hour intervals were based off of racing. Replacement should probably be as needed. Plenty of bikes running 400-500 hours on main/rod and balancer bearings.
Word of advise. Change the oil and inspect the filters/screen and magnets often. This will let you know when your bearing service is due.

RE: Re: 07 fe550 engine questions, valves and main bearings

excellent to here on all points thank you for reply, i done the research on here before buying one and
also owning bikes before hand and having old man who is a mechanic has told me one thing service it
often and keep oil and filters to it will make it last thanks for the reassurance.

cheers
mike

RE: Re: 07 fe550 engine questions, valves and main bearings

just because its not hard to check crank end float i reckon everyone should know what theirs is

you can pull the ignition cover off 4 bolts and check the endfloat (crank axial play) I did mine every 10 hours, toward 200hrs sometimes it was zero, mainbearing outer was starting to move in the case. spec is 0.3 -0.5mm

best things externally I think are, open up the muffler endcap, tidy up the headers/collector join where it goes 2into1 fix and welding dags on the inside of the headers, fix the jetting and get the suspension done.

Hi.

Pre-check is the key. We have seen so many break-down due to bad maintenence.

We normally get around 100hrs on the main bearings, we dont recomend any further use, because its turns out to be expencive if it fails.

The rest of the engine is not any big problem with, we change gearbox bearings and camchain at the same time. These parts are not the expensive ones.
On a stock engine 550/650 we get 250-350hrs on the conrod.( liner and piston seems to run fairly long as well)

The weak part is the DID camchain and the rocker arm rollers, but with the 2001-2003 IWS chain and a bit softer valvesprings (dual type) it last much longer.

As Bushy says: check freeplay on mains, and if you have the time, remove spring on the tensioner for the camchain, take out the tensioner and see so it is not fully extended. This saves some money, if the chain is to long- it breaks or jumps a few teeth, can be expensive.

If anything breaks during riding, you will hear this anyway.

Just use the bike what its ment for- Racing, not traveling.

//Thomas

awesome thanks for advice i will be looking at doing the dual valve springs to take pressure of the whole valve train, so the cam chain even in the 07 08 models is still weak?

this is a mainbearing out of a 550 just 20hrs after one of many in a lovingly expensive series of rebuilds due to mains failure. I've heard near 20K was spent on this bikes engine over 2 years 8O

in this case it was either built with zero endfloat or "something" happened after the build to close up the endfloat (crank axial play). if the crankwebs move on the pin or either of the 2 mainbearing outers move in the cases or either of the 2 mainberaing inners move on the crank the endfloat closes up.

piston/rings/liner/ counterbalancer and stator trashed. poor fella

FWIW my DID chainhad 1click left on the tensioner at 170hrs.

hey bushy,
that failure was on the running surface,bit different to mine. i assume that was an original bearing with c3 clearance?
if it was,that would mean that mains failure was caused by improper assembly,most probably the crank wasn't aligned properly with dial gauges,or knocked out of alignment during assembly.
is that the way you see it?
..weed..

this bearing was an earlier one than 07 08 im guessing.

anyone had 07 550 650 bearing failure yet?

this bearing was installed in 2008, same bearings are in your bike sikd its a proper current spec KTM OEM skf c3 with the vc025 code specially hardened for contaminated enviroments.

when I undid the bolts holding this 550's CCases together they popped open, this crank had been running with about negative 0.2-.3mm endfloat ie heaps of preload on the bearing inner race lip. just like every picture of this type of failure that Ive seen you can clearly see that at the location of the spalling the rollers were running hard up against the lip (zero endfloat) they can't handle that. it was unnecesarry as there is about 1.5mm undamaged and unused surface on the inner race.

this one is a beauty in that its blue, very badly damaged and the spalling is right the way round so its not just from crank flex its from constant axial overlaoding of the bearing.

weed just about everything you could get wrong in an engine build was wrong in this one, mostly the negative endfloat but yep the crank was also twisted and spread. the drive side had a TMB ball bearing i'd say they "couldn't" check the endfloat because of the ballbearing so they just didn't.... I know the guys who did the work don't even check crank runout so ..... boom.

whats the word for the opposite of making sure everything is spot on?

the point I wanted to make was that it doesn't matter which bearing is in there if its got no endfloat its gonna get toasted .........its so easy to check the crank axial play.

I've heard of 07-08 550 mains going but not the 628 (650) s

Ive got some pics of my mains 170hrs in good conditon another set of mine 20 hrs old not so good and some theories on why the SKF bearings can't handle the axial loads as good as the others, will put it in the mainbearing thread in a couple of days.

wow that crazy now im scared to ride the ****** thing incase i brake it so to check the crank axial play pulll the ignition cover off and use feeler guages to check the pay, so it should have movement but not mor than .5mm, if it has non there could be a problem?

don't be affaid to ride the thing.......she'd be right mate...famous last words,hey.
if anything was to happen it should have happened by now.
in saying that be weary of it.
like i was saying a while back.
i know mine has that same problem of wandering end float.
i have .4mm when its hot, but next to no end float when the motor is cold.
the bearing inner on the right side wasn't exactly a tight fit on the crank when i assembled it,so i put bearing retainer on it to stop it from moving.it worked for a couple of months,cause i was getting .4mm with the engine hot or cold.now obviously its let go.
i'm over worrying about it,cause its been like this for about 70 engine hours now & its still charging like a wounded scrub bull.
no metal on drain plug,so i can't complain.
the secret is,is to not be a ******** & rev the crap out of the motor while it has minimal end float,just give it a bit of a chance to get a bit of heat into everything so the endfloat comes back to normal ,then you can flog it as much as you like without any worry.
what is the diameter of the 450/550 crank pin? probably to small like the 644cc,too much crank flex?
..weed..

sikd mate don't worry too much, its confusing reading all the different threads it won't really make any sense untill you open up the engine and see whats going on in there, just check the endfloat every 10 hours to keep an eye on it, check the drainplug often and don't rev it too much for too long ... try to avoid spreading the crank.

its good to know that wandering endfloat isn't terminal if you let the motor warm up properly before you get into it, mine was like that for about 20hrs. I used to take off the ignition cover and slap the crank over to the LHS pushing the bearing outer back into its proper spot after every ride, sometimes I forgot.

the 550 bearing in the pic above went for 20hrs with a complete cockup of an engine build which is very impressive on the part of the bearing really even if somethings a tad wrong it should still go 200hrs + and there are 550's with 30 000km on orignal mains.

I'd send my engine to John Prior IN orange NSW if I needed work done on it, hes got some different NTN mainbearings that haven't failed yet

in vic, valley force berg get a good rep whay not call one of them, they'll tell you what they think of the whole setup, internet bollocks and all

don't worry about that bushie fella hes frigging mad !

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hey,maybe i'm from the old school but,i'm suprised at the amount of blokes i know who start a motorcycle from cold,then rev the sheit out of it.
i can't understand it?
buggered if i know? maybe i understand mechanics a bit more than others, or on the flip side,i might be a bit more anal.
hey..... i got nothing against giving the thing a good work out...yip yah.. its all good fun,but it just makes me cringe when i see lads do that,they don't seem to have any idea of the damage that can be done.maybe it's because whatever i phuck,i gotta fix.
anal..weed..

some guys repeatedly rev a new cold engine in nuetral to the limiter to break it in WTF?

I don't get it either

ok thanks guys, yeah i not one for revin when its cold, thats when most wear occurs cold engine.

one last thing should there be anything on the magnet drain plug at all or should it be totally clean, not huge flakes or anything
but like fine fine oil and metalic sludge?

sickd said:

ok thanks guys, yeah i not one for revin when its cold, thats when most wear occurs cold engine.

one last thing should there be anything on the magnet drain plug at all or should it be totally clean, not huge flakes or anything
but like fine fine oil and metalic sludge?

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Depends how often it is cleaned. Unless you clean it often, there is going to be something on it. What you described is what mine looks like after 40-50 hours.

ok cool well i just bough it and i think the last oil change was about 300km ago so well due for one the oil screen was fine and the filter did not show any signs of metal, i just gonna ride it and keep eye on it fingers crossed.

thanks for everyones help, im sure i will have some more questions lol
cheers mike

what oil do you use and how often changing ? I do mine every ride or second one they only hold a bit less than a litre i have the same bike I use Scotts filter Rotella T clutch likes it fine

i only bought the bike 2 weeks ago, rode once and just done the oil i will do it every 2 or 3 rides if its big ride weekender or something will change after ride, i use motorex power synth, i put a k&n filter oil filter in it they good brand here will get ktm ones shortly.

i will take it for good ride and then dump oil out of it see what its like.