Hello again all! Long time no see!

Hello everyone! I've missed this forum, my CB500 has been out of action for a couple of years now, and I've been riding a CBR600. I've missed the CB500, hope it will soon be back in action, it's nearly there now I think. Hope you've all been keeping well and not too down in the dumps about this virus business.

I'd like to tell the story of my CB500 saga, it's a bit of an epic though, all starting with a skipped cam chain, and progressing through the efforts of my brother and I, the workshop of Ben Coyle at BCR performance, twice, and finally back to my garage, hopefully ready to fight again. x There may be a few lessons here for all of us, I've certainly learned a thing or two...

Which is the best part of the forum for me to put this in?

Either here within this thread or over at the water cooler, I should expect. Look forward to reading your trials and tribulations

Hi Basil. Yes, long time no see. The same goes for me, as I've been busy riding a 1998 Blackbird since march. Quite a departure from the CB, but there's no denying the CB is still fun to ride. Albeit in a quite different way than the considerably heavier Blackbird.

Still, let's hear your tale of a skipped camchain and the woes that followed.

Hi Stormbringer! How is Denmark? Blackbird sounds fun, you still got both bikes? Nice to have two, my idea was to have two so I could work on one while riding the other but sadly this CB500 saga has turned into such an epic it's not worked out as I imagined.

So I'll start with the story, starts in summer 2018 while I was working in Derby, commuting from Nottingham on the trusty CB. Rode to work one morning, thought to myself how well it was running... Some hours later, came to ride home, started with a cough and had bugger all power! I limped it home, did a compression check, low compression both sides! Got the top off and found it had skipped the cam chain, which was rather worn. Combination of that and a tired CCT, they seem to be an Achilles heel on these bikes. Reset the timing, still low compression, checked valve clearances - all OK (had not long since done them as routine service). So not a bent valve, but I figured probably the seats were burnt from riding with the timing off. 

I looked into options for having the valve seats re cut, and found Ben Coyle's website, BCR Performance. All sorts of shiny upgrade options, looked cool, so I emailed him for a quote. He got in touch, said he could do this, and could tidy up the ports for me. Sounded good so I sent him the head. He also recommended I replace the timing chain, so while I was waiting for the head, my brother and I stripped the engine down. The bores were a little polished after 76,900 miles, so I asked Ben for his advice. He sold me some old Fireblade pistons, and eventually got round to posting them to me... I had the bores cut for them at a local machine shop in Nottingham. I spent well over the value of the bike I'm sure, replacing all the big end bearings, cam chain etc, and cleaned and resprayed all the parts.

My new job was coming up in Liverpool, and I hoped to be able to ride the bike to my new house. Unfortunately Ben Coyle was taking much longer than expected to do the valves. It transpired that recutting valves was something he can't actually do himself and had to wait for his local machine shop to do it for him. This was disappointing to say the least, since I could have had it done by my local shop and got the engine all back together... Anyways, I waited, I moved house and started my new job, I waited some more. Many messages back and forth, and he started offering to grind them in with paste! Obviously I wanted the job done properly which was the reason for doing this in the first place, so I declined and waited. And waited...

Anyway, eventually he returned the head in December, 7 months after I sent it to him, having eventually got it back from the machine shop. He told me the valves were really burnt, so he'd replaced them free of charge. I asked for the old valves but seems he must have lost them, shame as I was looking forward to seeing the damage!

 I started the rebuild, but new job was insane busy. Got it to run in January 2019, but still low compression! At this point the job was put on ice as the job was eating me alive and my morale for tinkering with engines was at a desperately low ebb. 

In March this year I'd rotated in my job again and had a bit more time. I also discovered the reason for the low compression the valve was broken in my compression test adapter! That simple piece of kit had been the problem all along! Anyway, retested and found the compression to be good, so promptly booked it in for an MOT, which it passed with flying colours. Full of excitement that my trusty steed was alive again, I decided to ride it to the climbing wall to celebrate. I got about a mile down the road, when the engine seized with a bang, the rear wheel locked, and all my joy evaporated... I pushed it home with the clutch pulled in, and had a moment, this was seriously upsetting after all that had happened. I'll continue the story in another reply so I can figure out how to add pictures...

So, having mustered courage, I removed the head, as it wouldn't turn at all. This is what I found:




Essentially, one of the valves had dropped in, punched a hole in the piston, scored up the bore something awful, and ruined the head. On closer inspection, all the valve collets were loose. I called Ben Coyle, who initially didn't want to know anything about it, said it was out of warranty because more than 6 months had passed. I sent him the MOT certificate to show I couldn't have ridden it, but he persisted in saying I must have been riding it off the road. He eventually agreed to "look at it" to determine what had gone wrong.

He got back in touch to say that the valve had dropped because the valve seats where cut too deeply and the shims were as a result too small, the buckets were worn, allowing the valve retainer to contact the bucket, and hence the collets had been knocked out. I still don't quite understand what he was getting at here. He claimed this wasn't his fault as he had done the work to a "good standard". I asked if he had measured these before reassembly and he said that if he measured everything he'd never get any work done! 

It all turned quite unpleasant, and quite a lot of correspondence passed, I used email for the purpose of having a record, and when I suggested a small claims court as an alternative way to resolve this he called back, was very contrite and offered to repair it for me. He offered various upgrades as some kind of sweetener, but I said all I'd like was the engine in working order. He told me he had a good head to use and offered to respray it, which I thought was fair. As is the theme with this saga, I then waited...

Anyway, 6 months passed since he had picked up the engine, more correspondence, more frustration... In October he messaged me to say all was done the bores were still within spec having been honed, which surprised me a bit as the scoring looked so deep. The engine was apparently still mostly mine, the bottom end having not been damaged too badly. He returned the engine, sans one of the sump fins, with a head badly sprayed with peeling black paint... I've resprayed this myself, and should be in a position to put it back in the bike soon. Fingers crossed it will work this time!

Reads like a horror story Basil. What a sh1te chain of events, not helped by the continuing lack of any effort on the half of BCR Performance to put things right. I'm sorry for your trouble.

What can I say, lessons have been learned eh? Lesson one, check your measuring equipment is calibrated and functioning - it hadn't occurred to me that the compression tester may be faulty because I use it without the extension on a CG125, and the readings I was getting on that were normal. Turns out that the extension was at fault! Lesson two, anything that needs an expert in a machine shop to fix should be taken to an appropriately qualified expert in a machine shop... Suffice it to say I won't have any other work done by BCR. 

I just hope the bike runs OK when I get the block back in place, this whole sorry saga has killed all the fun for me. It's gone from being my pride and joy to feeling like a big oily albatross hung round my neck... I've been pretty near to scrapping it a few times now.

We live and learn. Looking forward to that happy ending.

you wont be using them again then they dont seem very reliable 

That's quite a horrific story.  Suddenly I'm quite glad that I haven't had to send any bits of my bike out for 'adjustment' by anyone else.

Glad to hear you are trying to get it to go again, good luck in finding the time!