Cam wear...

Hey all. I have a 2009 Husaberg FE570 with 13000 miles and 440 hours. No top end work as far as I know (or anything deeper). I’m in the middle of assessing some things. Leak down test was about 8%. Could be a good thing. The rockers looks worn. And the cam has some shininess in a vertical pattern. I don’t think it’s grooves though. I plan to run across it with a tool to see if it’s grooved. Tomorrow maybe.
3 valves all in spec and one intake about .05 mm out, loose. So my question is, can I just replace the rockers and keep riding or is that a bad idea?
Pics of the intake rocker and the cam. Blue arrow is the exhaust rocker and the red arrow is the cam.
Thanks!

2ndGen said:

Hey all. I have a 2009 Husaberg FE570 with 13000 miles and 440 hours. No top end work as far as I know (or anything deeper). I’m in the middle of assessing some things. Leak down test was about 8%. Could be a good thing. The rockers looks worn. And the cam has some shininess in a vertical pattern. I don’t think it’s grooves though. I plan to run across it with a tool to see if it’s grooved. Tomorrow maybe.
3 valves all in spec and one intake about .05 mm out, loose. So my question is, can I just replace the rockers and keep riding or is that a bad idea?
Pics of the intake rocker and the cam. Blue arrow is the exhaust rocker and the red arrow is the cam.
Thanks!

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Ended up getting the cam out for inspection. Lobes felt smooth to the fingernail. Got some advice to shine the vertical wear patterns up with crocus cloth. The lobes measure right within spec with the exhaust lobe at the smallest and the intake lobe at the biggest end of spec. Odd but I’ll take it.
The rockers are jacked. Got new ones coming. I wonder how the oil flow is up there. Got the new rocker shafts coming too with the oil groove in them so hopefully that will help.
Hoping this old timer of a bike will feel solid and peppy in a couple weeks. (Not that this monster needs anymore pep.)

rikschipp said:

So many questions, 2nd gen.

What do the shims look like?

Was the head screen full of sh*t? Other screens?

What oil? Has it ever run low?

If the cam passes the fingernail test, and measures up, I'd keep it.

How's the cam chain tensioner, does it rattle on start up? They are a good indicator of rubbish in the oil.

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Nice. I like all the questions. At least one shim on the intake was cupped. Same last time I checked the valves a while back. One shim cupped, the others were fine. This time I only checked the first one I grabbed. Can’t remember if it was the same one as last time unfortunately. I’ll check the others for sure. My parts are in the mail so I’ll be in there soon I hope. Haven’t checked the oil screens in a bit but last time I checked they looked great. The first time I checked on this bike I got nervous because it was new to me and had some material in the bottom screen. Maybe gasket material or something? Not sure. Not a lot and next couple times seemed fine. Never ran low on oil on my watch but I’m only a couple thousand miles into this bike. The other 11k are other folks so who knows. I use the Motorex oil recommended in the manual. Not sure for previous owners. Cam chain never rattled for me yet. I’ll check again after all this work to be sure but chain felt good before I took the tensioner out this time. OEM tensioner.

rikschipp said:

I'd put new shims in, don't know whether it's a thing there but have seen exchange shims here that are dodgy, the hardening is pretty thin, if they've run a bit tight and hot, they score easy.

If you've only had it a while who knows what's gone on before- might have had 4 or 5 previous owners!

Debris in the sceens that looks and feels rubbery is the silicone gasket goo coming off the cases. Nomal, goes on for a while- just little bits- not to worry.

It will live for years, I reckon- I intend keeping mine for ever- or until the greenies take it from my cold dead hands- hopefully some smart young thing will invent an audio device to make the Akra sound like an electric motor! They used to call Huskies sewing machines........

Rik

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Good call on new shims. Those things were probably getting hammered for a good while. Definitely curious to see what the clearances look like with new rockers. Might have to buy a range of shims to zero in on spec.

Mid valve adjust. I took the cam out but the rockers wouldn’t fall back far enough to access the shims. The manual says “raise the rockers” and I remember distinctly the last time I adjusted valves I could roll them back all the way. I think. This time the intake rocker hits something that stops it. I took the intake rocker out and then the exhaust rocker freely rocked back all the way.

Is this normal? Is something drastically wrong.

Also I released the cam chain tensioner by way of just pushing up on the cam chain guide until it released (like you would on a table). The chain seems tight. Can it get too tight? The manual says to push from the top (with a special too) but I wasn’t sure if this would create a different tension than compressing it from the bottom. I thought maybe that little button on the top was a different release than the full compression release. Anyway, I’m paranoid about the tension.

I think it has to be the intake rocker hitting the inside (right side) cam bearing. I can’t imagine anything will interfere with anything else when the cam is in and everything is only moving hundredths of millimeters so I’m fairly sure I’ll just start it up and see what happens but let me know if this is a bad idea.

Otherwise it’s coming along nicely. New rockers and shafts. Valves perfectly in spec (after many errors, math and otherwise). New injector and fuel filters. Wrapped my mid pipe and repacked my FMF canister. I hope to run it this weekend.