Just noticed I messed up the quoted bit, there. Ooops.
marboulette
[quote=“TaipeiSean”]In the June edition of the 2 Wheels magazine there is an article on the RZR and RZX, on page 124-125. There is a pic of a red and whte one and a black one. Back in 1999 whn Ifirst came to Taiwan used to see a lot of these so when I went looking for a bike here that is what I thought I would be buying until I went to one bike shop and they had a big row of NSRs…
I still see a red and white RZX parked near my work in Taipei.
Oh, the article is in Chinese…[/quote]
Just saw (as in Looked at the Pictures) that article in one of the Yoof Cafe hangouts near the campus. Unfortunate from my point of view since anything that suggests these old smokers are “cool” puts my components at greater risk.
Maybe I’ll “borrow” it.
There are a couple of RZX’s on campus, and I suppose their owners would be on a suspect list for the stripping of mine, but I don’t have anything specific against them.
I wonder if it would it be practical / worthwhile to “security mark” the components in some way, but I guess not.
Parenoids get stuff knicked too.
Any advice on engine removal (and replacement, which I suspect will be more difficult)
The main engine mounting bolt is also the swingarm pivot. This bike doesn’t have a centre stand, which would be worth its weight in, well weight. I’ve improvised a Spanish windlass from the bike shed rafter which unloads the rear suspension, but converts the bike (remains) into an odd-shaped pendulum.
I’ve driven the bolt out to the end of its thread. Its tight but I should be able to get it out the rest of the way, which I plan to do tommorrow, if it isn’t knicked overnight.
I might need a (soft metal?) drift. (had an aluminium one in the yook but don’t have anything like that here.)
I’m a bit concerned that getting engine, frame and swingarm all lined up for re-assembly is likely to be a pain.
Is it, and if so are there any tricks?
Are there any bearings (eg needle rollers) for the swingarm which could be damaged or displaced when removing or replacing the pivot bolt?
The RZ’s have needle roller swingarm bearings but they are caged. I usually strip and rebuild them on a wooden box for a stand. Use a big screwdriver to roughly align (podge) everything when you reinstall the pivot bolt and grease everything well. A good dollop of grease helps to keep the washers on either side of the swingarm pivots in place. Make good notes or take photos of the order those washers and spacers were installed in and it’s all easy. Everything is pretty light so it’s not a hard job.
Thanks. reassuring.
Incidentally I just realised a temporary work around for the holed fuel tank was staring me in the face. Since I was initially running premix, and initially just wanted something that would get me through the rather perfunctory name transfer inspection, I could have just used the oil reservoir.
Doesn’t hold much, of course, but its already plumbed (almost) and its even got a level sensor, though I dont know if it would work with the lower density fuel.
Doh, doh, and thrice doh!
I’d swap the oil line for something a little larger in diameter. You won’t have as much height above the carb for gravity feed so you’ll have less head of pressure in the fuel line. The oil line is pretty skinny so I’d be nervous about fuel starvation if you are getting on it. Fuel starvation = lean running = seizure. Not good.
Not too bad, once I realised I should take the sprocket cover off. Some bright-metal circumferential scoring on the pivot bolt that I don’t like the look of much, but it went back in ok nudging the swingarm with a hydraulic jack once or twice.
If one is used to cars being able to pick up the engine and clean it in the sink is a novelty, though the filth/weight ratio seems very high.
The current plan is to take everything I can off the frame but leave it rollable. Bars, suspension wheels tyres and wiring loom stay on for now. I’ll chain the wheels and hope the pond life don’t need them in the near future. I’ve had to vacate my large room in the school dorm so I’m acutely short of storage space.
Given that it sat for a few months after the carb was knicked (though I taped up the intake as soon as I discovered the theft) the engine should probably be stripped and cleaned, but I don’t really have anywhere to do that at the moment. Clandestine engine rebuilds are probably too stressful.
I need now, and have always needed, a shed. My grandparents had sheds but I’m 2nd generation landless peasant apartment dweller. Sucks but thems the breaks. Looking at the housing pattern here Taiwanese seem to prefer it. Weird
[quote=“redwagon”][quote=“Ducked”]
Incidentally I just realised a temporary work around for the holed fuel tank was staring me in the face. Since I was initially running premix, and initially just wanted something that would get me through the rather perfunctory name transfer inspection, I could have just used the oil reservoir.
Doesn’t hold much, of course, but its already plumbed (almost) and its even got a level sensor, though I don’t know if it would work with the lower density fuel.
[/quote]
I’d swap the oil line for something a little larger in diameter. You won’t have as much height above the carb for gravity feed so you’ll have less head of pressure in the fuel line. The oil line is pretty skinny so I’d be nervous about fuel starvation if you are getting on it. Fuel starvation = lean running = seizure. Not good.[/quote]
Good points. Don’t know if I need to do it now though. Depends on whether the paint coming off the inside of my new tank gets to be a regular bike-stopper or not. I suspect it was aggravated by the use of premix and might not be so bad with straight petrol, which I’m on now.
If a fix is required options for that seem to be
(a) Strip the inside of the tank to bare metal using paint stripper and abrasive (Gravel, nuts and bolts.) Difficult to be thorough though, and I guess the bare metal will corrode faster.
(b) Line the tank
Edit: Damn and blast! Lost the keys. I can probably swap ignition locks with the stripped “rolling frame” bike (for which I still have the keys) but that doesn’t solve the tank lock problem, so maybe I won’t be able to use the tank and will have to try the oil-tank trick after all. Bugger.
The keys from the stripped machine (not lost) work in the other machines locks (keys lost), so no problem.
Couple of possibly related observations after a short (20K-ish) run, followed by a 6 hour stand.
(a) The transmission oil level seems to have risen. When the machine is level the sight glass is completely filled. I’m pretty sure this wasn’t always the case
(b) The fuel tap seems to have stopped working (?!). Draining the fuel into a jerrican I could not shut it off at any position. It used to apparently work. The tank was about a third full which is probably the fullest its been.
My best guess at this time is that fuel is draining from the carb at rest and running into the gearbox via the crankcase, presumably past dodgy shaft seals.
I don’t want to leave the bike in this theft-prone location (on campus) overnight so I’ll replace the gearbox oil and see if the old stuff smells of gasoline/petrol, before moving it. Any alternative explanations/suggestions would be welcome.
I plan to swap the engine tommorrow (if I can get the bike back here OK) so its likely that problems with the replacement will then become the primary concern.
[quote=“Ducked”]
(a) The transmission oil level seems to have risen. When the machine is level the sight glass is completely filled. I’m pretty sure this wasn’t always the case
(b) The fuel tap seems to have stopped working (?!). Draining the fuel into a jerrican I could not shut it off at any position. It used to apparently work. The tank was about a third full which is probably the fullest its been.
My best guess at this time is that fuel is draining from the carb at rest and running into the gearbox via the crankcase, presumably past dodgy shaft seals.[/quote]
Maybe your parts thieves are sorry for stealing your bits and want to make up for it by helping you add oil? 
The carb has drain tubes which should allow flooding gas to pass into the tubes which pass out behind and below the gearbox to atmosphere. Check that they are clear. If the float needle is worn / dirty and allowing the carb to flood you should have a big puddle under the bike and of course a flooded engine. Rotate the engine very slowly by hand to check it is not full of gas or you could bend or even snap the connecting rod.
If you had bad crank seals you would have noticed either the idle becoming very erratic or the transmission oil disappearing very quickly into a cloud of white smoke that followed you around.
If you had the oil injection system I would suggest that the oil seal the pump driveshaft passes through was failing and allowing 2T to pass into the clutch cover.
It can take a while for all of the transmission oil to show in the sight glass after leveling the bike. If the motor is not flooded and turns / starts up okay I would leave the bike on the center stand (if you have one) or upright somehow for a while and after an hour drain enough of the oil in the transmission to meet the high mark in the glass. Check again in a couple of days and see what happens.
A tap that was full of crap could easily fail to turn off. Maybe cleaning it out will fix it. You should find that an SR150 tap fits your tank. I seem to recall they are the same part, or at least can be swapped.
BTW, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the SR150 full-enclosure chaincase fitted the RZ with a little massaging. Chassis design has a LOT in common.
Thanks. A few possibilities there. The fuel tap was cleaned as part of the “get it going” initial fiddling about, but perhaps paint flakes from the shiny new petrol tank have got in it subsequently.
I drained most of the transmission oil, spilling some of it in haste cos I was running out of daylight and imagining the shadows were full of parts/tool thieves. (Oil can be relied on never to drain directly into a narrow necked bottle but I was dumb enough to try anyway, THEN I went and got a cup)
It looked VERY clean, clear in fact, so clean I was tempted to put it back, though with what looked to be quite a lot of grey “marbling” that I guess is metal particles from the gears.
Since all the mineral oil I recall seeing had a brownish tinge I guess this stuff was synthetic, though I’ve never knowingly seen synthetic out of the bottle before. There was no smell of petrol (gasoline), nor any (green) colour from direct contamination with 2 stroke oil (I am currently using the oil pump) so I stopped draining, BUT it occurs to me now that either would probably float on top of the transmission oil (if it drained in while the bike was standing, which I guess probably wouldn’t apply to the 2-stroke oil) and so would be last out of the drain hole, so I might have missed it.
Alternatively, it MAY just have always been overfilled. I’d have expected to notice that earlier but I dont use the centre stand much. (This bike has one, the stripped “rolling frame” doesn’t)
The sight glass is discoloured / dark so one could probably not observe colour, and perhaps not layering, through it.
I topped up with CPC 40W “HDX” mineral oil (so I now have high-spec chain oil and low-spec gear oil) and rode back to Tainan. On the way back, while “coasting” (in gear but with the clutch held in) downhill to a red light, the engine stopped dead. I tried a rolling re-start, no dice (though it turned over and the lights came back on) and it was yea, even as a doornail, for about 20 minutes, until I got de-kitted to push it home, then it re-started and ran home with no further problems.
Thats a very similar failure mode to the last time. It doesn’t like coasting. During the static restart attempts petrol was getting to the carb but of course I dunno if it was getting any further, nor do I know if it was getting a spark.
Late start this morning (beer last night) and it wasn’t running very well (cutting out a lot) so I postponed the engine swap mission until tommorrow, since I want to avoid leaving it on campus overnight if possible. If it won’t run tommorrow I’ll move my tools back to Tainan, strip/clean the carb there, stop using the shiny-new-flakey-paint-POS-petrol-tank, and see if that makes a difference. There isn’t really space to do the engine-swap there and it would mightily piss-off my landlord to try, though I could probably strip an engine in my room.
The oil level was LOW this morning (?) I suppose petrol could be leaking IN when stopped and oil leaking OUT when going? AARGH!!
I topped it up again and will keep an eye on it.
Showed a more marked tendency to kick back on starting yesterday morning, consistent, I suppose, with flooding with oil/petrol, and there was a suggestion of green/blue in the sight glass, (ditto, since the transmission oil is (now) light brown/honey colour).
Started OK and ran fine out to CJU, and I was tempted to keep going up into the mountains, rather than break a functioning motorcycle. Should have yielded .
NO VISIBLE OIL in the sight glass on arrival, (after maybe an hour of settle time). Now, “on the bench” (actually, on top of the office fridge, where it may get me into terrible trouble if anyone sees it) its OK level-wise and cloudy green in appearance, but it might not be sitting at the right angle for reading. Anyway, that engines out, and I’ve made myself a bunch of other grief.
Engine swap (for registration purposes, maybe its not worth it but too late now) : Alignment A BIT more grief than billed. I’ll try and get a spike (which should be self-centreing) for next time, though I suppose if I screw up badly with a spike it could be more damaging.
(a) Chewed up one of the oil pump cover screws so no oil pump access or function since the thieves chopped off the old cable (looks like they used a machete) and I can’t get in to attach the other one.
(b) Electrically dead, still to be investigated, but I had a 4-way muliblock connector I couldn’t match which might be relevant.
© Last but most grief (so far): The clutch wont disengage: The travel on the lever looks OK so I’m guessing that the plates are stuck together during its long stand. Tricks?
I’m thinking, not necessarily in this order:
(1) Drain/replace the oil, I have some Delvac 40 I’ll use as replacement oil cos its presumably got a lot of of detergent in it.
(2) and/or use a solvent (diesel? gasoline? White Spirit? Gunk? [though I dont have any] Alcohol? Acetone? ATF / Hydraulic Oil - [probably not the last because it attacks seals maybe, but it has a lot of detergent and in an emergency?])
(3) IF I can get it running on the centre stand (probably unlikely) in 2nd? whack the rear brake on a few times to try and break the plates loose.
(4) Give up, swap the engines back again, strip this one and see what kind of mess the plates, etc are in.
Do these have aluminium plates?(which I hadn’t heard of till last week) The “marbling” in the oil from the other engine looked like aluminium dust, though I don’t know why I think I can tell. Havn’t tried a magnet on it.
[quote=“Ducked”]
© Last but most grief (so far): The clutch wont disengage: The travel on the lever looks OK so I’m guessing that the plates are stuck together during its long stand. Tricks?
I’m thinking, not necessarily in this order:
(1) Drain/replace the oil, I have some Delvac 40 I’ll use as replacement oil cos its presumably got a lot of of detergent in it.
(2) and/or use a solvent (diesel? gasoline? White Spirit? Gunk? [though I don’t have any] Alcohol? Acetone? ATF / Hydraulic Oil - [probably not the last because it attacks seals maybe, but it has a lot of detergent and in an emergency?])
(3) IF I can get it running on the centre stand (probably unlikely) in 2nd? whack the rear brake on a few times to try and break the plates loose.
(4) Give up, swap the engines back again, strip this one and see what kind of mess the plates, etc are in.
Do these have aluminium plates?(which I hadn’t heard of till last week) The “marbling” in the oil from the other engine looked like aluminium dust, though I don’t know why I think I can tell. Havn’t tried a magnet on it.[/quote]
Bump start the bike and see if the clutch will then disengage.
Do not put diesel or or other solvents, ATF etc. in there. You might easily soften or split a seal. Just pop the clutch cover and take a look. If you are careful you can reuse the gasket, though a whole gasket set is probably NT$100. The clutch is easy to strip and reassemble. The plain plates are steel, not alloy. ‘Marbling’ says to me you have gear wear, though the clutch hub bushing does wear over time and leave some debris.
[quote=“redwagon”][quote=“Ducked”]
© Last but most grief (so far): The clutch wont disengage: The travel on the lever looks OK so I’m guessing that the plates are stuck together during its long stand. Tricks?
I’m thinking, not necessarily in this order:
(1) Drain/replace the oil, I have some Delvac 40 I’ll use as replacement oil cos its presumably got a lot of of detergent in it.
(2) and/or use a solvent (diesel? gasoline? White Spirit? Gunk? [though I don’t have any] Alcohol? Acetone? ATF / Hydraulic Oil - [probably not the last because it attacks seals maybe, but it has a lot of detergent and in an emergency?])
(3) IF I can get it running on the centre stand (probably unlikely) in 2nd? whack the rear brake on a few times to try and break the plates loose.
(4) Give up, swap the engines back again, strip this one and see what kind of mess the plates, etc are in.
Do these have aluminium plates?(which I hadn’t heard of till last week) The “marbling” in the oil from the other engine looked like aluminium dust, though I don’t know why I think I can tell. Havn’t tried a magnet on it.[/quote]
Bump start the bike and see if the clutch will then disengage.
Do not put diesel or or other solvents, ATF etc. in there. You might easily soften or split a seal. Just pop the clutch cover and take a look. If you are careful you can reuse the gasket, though a whole gasket set is probably NT$100. The clutch is easy to strip and reassemble. The plain plates are steel, not alloy. ‘Marbling’ says to me you have gear wear, though the clutch hub bushing does wear over time and leave some debris.[/quote]
Too late. The original oil (unlike the other engine) was pretty filthy, with metallic sludge overlain with a lighter lumpy layer, possibly microbial in origin, and some signs of water contamination. I put a cocktail of diesel, Castrol GTX, and 2-stroke premix in, roughly 75/5/20 by volume. I pushed the bike around in neutral, occaisionally shoving it in gear and squeeking to a halt (I can’t run fast enough to screech to a halt). Then I had a break and read your post so I drained it, spilling quite a lot because the lighter mix “sprays” on exit.
It shifted a satisfyingly substantial amount of sludge but I noticed that the concrete under the spillage seemed to be fizzing in places. Concerned that the diesel (which was old and had been stored in my car boot, so concievably could have undergone chemical change) might be acidic, I repeated the “flushing” with about 70 mls of delvac 40 to about 400 mls of premix. There shouldn’t be anything too hostile in either of those (though of course the diesel might already have damaged seals). This stuff also seemed to fizz the concrete, so I doubt its an acidic reaction, probably just some small voids releasing trapped air.
I left it dripping. If I can find my continuity tester or buy another this evening (and if essentials are not stolen overnight) I’ll try and get it running (or opened up) tommorrow.
I believe stories about ghosts, the tooth fairy, flying saucers and “just pop the clutch cover” if they actually happen to me. So far, only flying saucers have, and they turned out to be an intermittant contrail. Still, you never know. 
How could I forget the number one techno myth, the “Five Minute Job”?
When I worked in IT, many’s the Hard Days Night I’ve had, doing a “Five Minute Job”, or dealing with the consequences of someone elses “Five Minute Job”
Eventually the phrase became a hex, and was locally banned. Kinda like actors aren’t supposed to say “Macbeth” but have to substitute “The Scottish Play”, cept that’s just a silly superstition.
There’s a disused double ramp (i.e. two opposed ramps) down to the basement of one of the dorm blocks, that I’d forgotten about. Quite steep, and the opposed ramp lets you recover unused energy. Perfect.
First time, wishing to be gentle, I banged it into first about a third of the way down. KLANG! CHUGALUGAlugaluga. No dice
Second time I ran all the way to the bottom. KERASH! Whirrrrrr!!!
That did it, though it scared the hell out of a local rat (which hadn’t heard me coming) and gave me a bit of a fright too. Still, seems to be free now and AFAIK without starting the engine I’ve got all the gears. Five minute job.
DOH!
Hopefully it was only the corrosion that broke.
Edit:Brooding on it further (which I should have done first, of course) that was probably a really dumb thing to do. Considerable force is on the engaging tooth which seems likely to be damaged, BUT I have other things I must do, and if I leave the bike here while I do them its especially exposed to thieves. Hence the premium on quick and dirty fixes.
Yup, wrecked the gearbox 
Didn’t seem too bad at first but it deteriorated rapidly over a kilometer or so and there was essentially no first gear (and difficulty selecting the others) by the time I got back to Tainan.
I guess the sump’ll have broken teeth in the bottom but the tools are still in CJU so havn’t had a chance to look.
[quote=“Ducked”]Yup, wrecked the gearbox
Didn’t seem too bad at first but it deteriorated rapidly over a kilometer or so and there was essentially no first gear (and difficulty selecting the others) by the time I got back to Tainan.
I guess the sump’ll have broken teeth in the bottom but the tools are still in CJU so havn’t had a chance to look.[/quote]
A friend of ours has a spare bottom end…It’s been lying outside, but the gearbox should be reasonably intact. PM me if you need to get hold of it, as the person in questions SO is sick of having this rustbucket in their yard.
Just popped the clutch cover yesterday (chewing up just one of the cover bolts, hacksawing and drilling just its head off, and damaging the cover just a little bit just on its surface). It just took half a day, easier than the Zing (where I gave up) since the cover has a reasonable provision of lugs to lever and hammer against.
There was A LOT of grey metallic slurry in the bottom of the case, but it didn’t feel gritty between finger and thumb, though there were a few visible shiny flakes. Given the state of the oil they’ve probably been there a long time. There were maybe a dozen or so sand-grain sized particles in the clutch bowl cover, some of which were metallic/magnetic, but no large fragments suggesting gross damage, like broken teeth.
However, I didn’t dismantle the gear train or the clutch, since I was out of time, and I dont think I want to take the gear train apart in an alley anyway. That’s probably an engine-out job, though it might be OK to take the clutch apart with the engine in situ.
Since I didn’t take the gear train apart I could have missed evidence of gross damage to it, but I’m wondering if clutch drag/slip, and/or an out of position gear selector, could explain the symptoms (Grinding, slipping stalling and lurching on selecting first gear from rest.)
To be investigated.
You will find that although the clutch can removed with the cases together, the gearbox cannot. It’s not a cassette type. If you don’t have an impact hammer you are not going to be able to split the cases. There are screws tucked away in places that cannot be chiseled or hacksawed. If you mash the heads, you are drilling them out, and even that will be hard due to the location. I know you don’t like impact drivers, but you will need one.