Yamaha Super Tenere Forum helps save a S10 from the scrap HEAP

[Zepfan]

She Lives !!!!!! Yamaha Super Tenere Forum helps save a S10 from the scrap HEAP

My '12 S10 Came back to life today after almost 2 months down. She sounds and runs great. No more noise for a few seconds on cold start.....LOL

The Scoop;
Chain slap on cold start. Dealer mentioned when I was in for a valve adj. Both dealer and myself, unaware of "known," .... CCT..... "issues."
I had been hearing the noise on most every cold start since about 50-60k/mi. CCT failed with 80176 mi. Herd louder slap - bike wouldn't start.
Took into dealer and performed leak test w/ "leaks all over, exh & int". Dealer wants $800. to drop motor. Svs writer kept telling me to scrap the bike.
Striped off all the swag and called a couple recyclers, no one wanted it. With encouragement and advise here, I started work. Pulled cover looked at marks.
Chain skipped on Exhaust side cam. Ignored advise from here to just re-time and dropped motor. Inside was really good no problems (did have carbon build up).
Bent one oil ring trying to replace bottom gasket. Can not buy rings only, sold in set (piston / rings). Lapped and honed.
About 40 hours total labor (cautious) with super detailed cleaning of everything. Had help re-assembling motor and getting motor back in w/ swing arm.
Total Parts,Gen 2 pistons/rings CCT, Gaskets, fluids=$890. Labor help 6hr. $200 TOTAL COST=$1100. Valves clearances / shims were still good so we lucked there.

Now I got to contribute as a site supporter again and THANK YOU everyone for advise.
I tried to find a junk yard to take it. Couldn't find then jumped on YAMAHA SUPER TENERE FORUM and was able to keep my bike ::015:: ::018::

Bike was / is super hard ridden in diverse environments. With the exception of ..... corrosion the bike is still very "tight," everywhere.
Cylinder walls still had old hone marks.
With (prior) knowledge of the CCT issue this bike would have run 200K/mi easy. And...... now it will with a new top end and pistons !

 

[Thrasherg]

Congratulations, I hope it didn’t cost too much to fix. Hope you have a lot of fun riding the fixed bike. Great start to 2018

 

[SilverBullet]

Good save. Too bad about not trying to reset the timing first but that's life. Nice, even a WWW's 21" front wheel.

Sent from my SM-G860P using Tapatalk

 

[Ramseybella]

What size woody's is on the rear 18" or 17" I see bare aluminum?
Glad you save the Tenere from the grave the original as well as the so called new and unproved CCT is IMO shit.. Went with a manual CCT very happy i did.

 

[Super08]

Wonderful, your dedication to get it done paid off.

 

[bruinTENEREguy]

So awesome to read this! Stoked to get my new-to-me in 2 days!

 

[~TABASCO~]

That's great !!!!! Congratulations!!

 

[Juan]

Well done. Where there's a will there's a way.

 

[steve68steve]

!!!!


Aw, HELL yeah!


If you didn't have to wait for parts, you would have had it done a day after mine was. Congrats on getting it all back together!


The part about not following advice leading to a bigger, more expensive, longer job: I can relate.

 

[stutrump]

Fab news. The S10 lives on!!

 

[EricV]

Congrats! When my '12 failed at about the same mileage, it took the Yamaha dealer 4 months to fix it because of the Warranty claims guy at corporate dragging his feet. So you beat a warranty repair by 2 months!! Great job. ::008:: You'll be less afraid to just jump in and tear things apart the next time you have an issue with something mechanical now too. ;D Hopefully not on the Super Ten for a long, long time. Enjoy your bike for many more miles.

 

[Nikolajsen]

::012::

 

[Zepfan]

She’s the cleanest since delivery. Every nook and crany cleaned treated with tri flow.

Special thanks to steve68steve and TOBASCO

Back to hammer down

 

[mrpincher]

Congrats are in order. Great save!

Am curious about the carbon build up on the pistons. How thick was it? Did it scrape off without too much trouble? I've been using that overpriced fuel additive Yamaha sells. I think it's called Ring Free. Wonder if the cost of that stuff is worth it?

 

[Xclimation]

Congratulations and good job! ::018::

You got a new bike!

 

[Zepfan]

Carbon build up ?? Maybe someone could chime in?

Pistons were replaced but I scrubbed the heads with gas, tooth brush and soft wire brush leaving residue.
Carbon was thick on both head and pistons. IS IT FROM RUNNING PREMIUM GAS ?? I'm betting.

I also bet you could run regular in this bike. I was in a couple rural areas in both Mexico and the states that didn't have premium and the bike ran fine.

 

[Checkswrecks]

Buildups come largely from incomplete burning of the mixture, which can have several causes. Lots of low engine revs, poor gas, etc. The wide flat tops of 600cc pistons aggravate this. Lots of us just run regular with no problem till it gets hot or under really heavy load in the summer.


Yamaha highly recommends using cleaner regularly, especially in the Gen1 bikes.

 

[Zepfan]

Yamaha highly recommends using cleaner.

Really! ?? What do you use? I figured the carbon eventually kind of flakes off and goes through the exhaust. It was thick (1/16") inside my motor.

I ride hard and fast but rarely over 5k rpm. 5k in 6th is near 100 mph. I've always used Premium as available. But was thinking of going to Mid or Reg w/ increasing gas prices.

 

[Checkswrecks]

The Yam recommendation of Yamalube Engine Med RX was in the following post, which is buried in the thread about hard starting:
http://www.yamahasupertenere.com/index.php?topic=2149.750

We have some new info on this from Yamaha. It turns out that one of the Corporate tech supervisors has (or had?) a Gen1 Tenere and the person I talked to a couple of weeks ago mentioned this topic when talking to him. Now hearing that we still consider it to be an issue, my person called to share the following.

The company had been looking at hard starting and didn't have a clear answer when they came out with Gen2. By that time the number of service claims had diminished so with the new model they moved on to bigger problems. I'll add that in retrospect it kind of makes sense since the owners had their work-arounds and had gotten frustrated with the dealers.

We owners have long known that we could induce or aggravate a bike which has a hard start and in this forum we've repeatedly come back to discussing:

Not letting the engine fully warm before shutting it off.
Leaking fuel injection or letting the system pressure build correctly by interrupting a start.
The start may be harder with an older (lower voltage) battery.


The tech supervisor related through my person that when trying to figure this out, they had been suspecting that the issue is related to fouling the plugs, because they found the bikes doing short runs and not warming were the worst offenders. This would validate what we'd thought on our first point, because before the engine warms up, the ECU enriches the fuel-air mixture like an automated choke on a carbureted engine.

The forum members found that you need to let the fuel pump fully cycle before hitting the start button and we've known that once a bike wouldn't start, pulling the fuse or using the wide-open-throttle would be needed to clear the cylinders. This fits with the company's suspicion of fouling the plugs too. I'll add from instrumented airplane injection system tests that if the fuel pressure isn't allowed to stabilize, then the system may fluctuate pressure drastically up and down to "chase" getting it right and suddenly you can have raw fuel in the cylinders.

And finally, at the same time the battery has the heavy current draw of a starter motor, the battery needs to also provide enough power to run the ECU and ignition system. Fouled or wet plugs need a lot more power to develop a spark, so what we discussed fits this too. And once they start to coat, the down-hill degradation in performance just accelerates.

So for those having a bike which starts hard, we already figured out that we need to (1) let the fuel pump fully cycle before pushing the start button and (2) let it warm before shutting it off. Once warm, it is out of the enriched fuel-air mixture of starting. (3) If you still have a problem and are letting the engine warm, look into your battery and connections.

(4) The new item that the tech supervisor wanted us to know is that when they stopped looking into this they were getting positive results from regularly using Yamalube Engine Med RX. I looked it up and while the MSDS sheet just says it's a proprietary mixture, the Yamaha site says the following about it:

"Provides superior carbon deposit control, cleaning injectors, carburetors, intake valves and ports, and combustion chambers. It also protects fuel system metals from ethanol sulfate salt corrosion. Add it at every fill up to avoid unnecessary engine repairs due to poor quality gas, and to keep your engine clean and running efficiently."- See more at: https://www.shopyamaha.com/product/details/engine-med-rx?b=Search&d=34|34&dealernumber=#sthash.P27PGRTi.dpuf

The stuff is simply a fuel system cleaner/stabilizer, similar to Ring Free, Techron, and Seafoam. His suggestion to people is use it at fill ups, which also fits with the idea of preventing fouled plugs.

My person and the tech supervisor talked about ECU changes for the 2014 Gen2 bikes and they are only willing to disclose what changed with no details about how. The only relevant thing was that the engine fueling and management was changed for the mechanical changes implemented, and these likely would very much affect starting. No surprises.

Finishing our talk and finding out that this tech supervisor at corporate was or is an owner of our bike, I was curious about whether the corporate folks follow the forums to know when there are ongoing issues like this. Our forum has had a couple of employees "out" themselves out over the years, so we know there are a couple among us. The answer was that many of the company employees own Yamaha products and may be members of a forum for their particular model, but the company does not do it. The key comment to me was that he said after working and talking motorcycles all day, most of them just aren't interested in forums and such after work. That's fair too.

I buy the little dinky bottles by the box, because they are fairly inexpensive, easy to carry, a bottle is about right for a tank fill, and after dumping in the bottle there's usually a trash can at the pump. I don't use them every fill but use them regularly.
https://rivaracing.com/i-22118092-engine-med-rx-3-2-oz.html

 

[Baja Explorer]

Great Job !!! Congratulations.... ::015::

I need to replace my CCT, which type you guys recommend. Is there a link to the procedure, appreciate any help.