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04 FE450E dies

C

Cheesehead

Joined Nov 2003
108 Posts | 1+
The Netherlands
On our last trip in the backyard of uncle Daffy called Libya (see gallery) my friends 04 FE450E died. The symptoms;
The engine suddenly stopped, after that it was hard to start and it would only idle at 1/2 throttle. It didn't run very well. We still had 100 km's to go. After 30 km's the engine ran even worse and smelled of gasoline. Shortly after that it stopped completely. Trying to start it again the engine had no compression and it rattled. Seems to me that something went wrong in the cylinder head and more specific; the inlet valves? Of course the gas in these countries is not too good quality.
Do you guy's have any thoughts or suggestions before we start to disassemble?

Thanks.
 
i think that your failure would have happened anywhere. wherther where you were and what you did had anything to do with it right there is another thing!

my money is on a mechanical failure or ignition. vales are you best start.

regards

Taffy
 
This failure turned out to be a broken exhaust valve spring. The valve cap also came loose and there are some small parts missing. Looking back in the archives this is not the first time this happened to a 04 model. I really hope the damage is limited to the valve and not the piston.
Do some of you guys have the same experience?
 
the piston can take quite a pounding - no probems but it might be worth letting us see the damage tot he top of the piston.

the valve will be shot and i would replace all four valve springs as a precaution because the inlets work harder so if the exhausts went well the inlets must be ify!

regards

Taffy
 
The piston seems to be OK, have a look in my gallery. The main concern is the absence of the valve "holders?" on top of the valve. As far as we can see and hear there's no damage in the gearbox but there are 2 metal pieces missing that didn't come out in the oil or oil filters.
Taffy, yes it seems a good idea to replace all the springs.
Is this problem common?
Thanks for the reply!
 
Been there, done that....

The missing parts are the valve keepers and they are probably sitting under the the crank shaft primary gear. Remove the clutch cover and get them out. If they get caught between the primary and clutch housing gear its going to be REAL expensive to fix it.

If there is any chance the piston clipped the valve, the valve will be bent and need replacing also.

You mentioned a 'valve cap' coming loose. Your engine doesn't have valve caps. The valve adjust screws have swivel feet on them, if one of them came loose then you need to replace the adjusting screw. You also should check the rocker arm to make sure it did not get bent.

This happened to my 00 501, which dropped the valve when the spring broke and it got hit by the piston. The spring retainer came off and got jammed between the end of the valve and the valve adjusting screw bending the rocker arm when the piston hit the valve.

I had to replace the valve, valve guide, keepers spring retainer,all of the springs, timming chain and the rocker arm assembly, VERY expensive.

Both of my Bergs are now sitting, waiting for after market springs, my 00 501 and my 04 550.

The 04 has 76 hours on it now and some of the 04's have been experiencing valve spring failure in the 65-120 hour period.

My 00 springs were replaced at the time the 04 build cycle started so I have now parked it also.

This is really bad, I haven't ridden since the middle of November 06 waiting for valve springs........

Regards,

Joe
 
we call them collets joe.

in some ways i hope you have to strip the engine cheesehead. i think that you need to check the bottom end right through mate.

regards

Taffy
 

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