Conrods.

Howdy groovers...

Im looking for some input as to causes of lost hardening from approx 1/4 of the big end (thrust face obviously)of my conrod.(04 fe650, 145hrs, 10500ks)
I understand that they are a high wear item like the mains and balancer bearings, but as there is no damage to the mains or balancer bearings (other than dents in races due to contamination from bigend) then Im starting to wonder if it is due to overgearing (deliverd new with 16/40 and 18 rear) not that I lug my motor but it is a big torquer so I never run it to valve bounce, just keep it in the mid range mostly (my mates ride jappers so I dont need to thrash it to leave them behind) or if its one foray onto a road race circuit (new Taupo short circuit) when I did run it hard all day (chasing and passing big sportsbikes) caused the hardening to let go.
Im not talking about a few spots of damage but the complete area over 1/4ish of circumfirance of rod.
Just curiouse if I have caused it or if its just wear and tear.
I should point out I have rebuilt dozens of motors over the years (from singles to V12s, petrol and diesel, new and old designs) but never seen damage like this before. But then again... none of those motors performed like this one either.
Any input anyone?

You bewdy Bushie.... perfict. Tried searching but kept ending up on mains thread. Need sum riding lessons on the search motor.
Although mine is nowhere near that bad......the discription of no discolouration, spalling and I was wondering why the flywheels were wider at the bottom.
Serves me right for nannering my bike......
Note to self.... ride it like I ride my honda, with disrespect.

Thanx again bushie.

p.s. I would have expected little end damage from lugging. My little end is tight as, just the big end gone.
We live and learn.

no worries

try using google

eg type in

big end site:husaberg.org

Click to expand...

Hokay..... I was using the website search.
Cheers.

BERGBRO

Could you describe to me the sound that gave away your conrod failure. My FE is @ 200Hours on the big end.

Mr Force (or do I call you The?) bro.
No noise gave it away, Bike had been in storage for 6 months whilst my foot was stuck back on the end of my leg.
Dragged it out and gave it a warm up (200km gravel ride) to change oil to a new product (ULK110 oil) and when I pulled the sump plug it looked like a porkypine. The bike did seem noisey but I had just got off my CB1300 so put it down to 1 verses 4 cylinders. Found the metallic stuff on the sump plug and decicded I had best investigate (keeping in the back of my mind what the doc sez about mains, assumed they were going). Stripped motor and only damaged metal I could find was from kickstarter.
Mains had small dents from something harder than oil going thru them but NO loss of material. slap tested the big end, seemed perfict. Zero wear on the little end.
After a seriouse washing of all components I collected the shrapnel and thort it looked odd for kickstart stuff....
Was about to reassemble motor with a large pile of new parts (thanx Taffy and others) when that little voice sed BEWARE..... rang Mr Husaberg in N.Z. (Nigal Bevan) who sed he has big end pins and rollers in stock (Husaberg only sell rod kits not components) so pop it apart and have a look just in case...... thank goodness I did.
I was very surprised that I couldn't detect anything through the slap test, and from my experiance with other motors, the rod has to float around a fair old amount before you will hear it, by which time a lot of hard metal has already been through your motor.
My advice is to analyse anything stuck to the sump plug.... I changed my oil every 10 hours (Motul 300v) and always had a very small amount of the usual flecks stuck to sump plug, but this last oil change there was a dramatic increase of stuff stuck to magnet. Look for change.

Side note. We have purchased $50k worth of vibration analysis gear for work so once big yella is flying again I will start monitoring and analysing the spectrums. It will take some time and milage to build up a database but it may be a sure fire way of predicting which components are wearing.

Sorry for the long winded reply but I am a firm believer in the more info you have the better decision can be made.

Cheers..... DSJ.