POSITIVE UPDATE: Painfull Lessons of Camshaft

After trying very hard to wreck the top end on the engine of my KZ1000P-24 20005 Police bike by stripping 7 camshaft tower bolts out the head, installing time serts, breaking camshaft tower two, putting it back together and hearing some nasty noises from the camshaft area near tower 4 - I am happy to report that I went on a great ride this past Saturday - the bike ran better than ever.

During the process, after having installed the time serts and relacing the broken cam tower two, I put her back together and started her up- she ran fine but I listening around - there was some nasty noise coming from around tower 4. I figured for sure that it was a misaligned camshaft from all the hacking around I did on the bolt holes. I assumed the worst and pictured taking the whole thing apart and having to replace the head.

However when I opened her up- the cams were fine no muss no fuss. I concluded that the noise came from reinstalling the reed valves in the cover head with gaskets that were busted in a few places - filling the broken areas in with gasket compound- dumb but I didn't want to wait for new gaskets. Air must have been sucking through there, rumbling and vibrating. I replaced the gaskets and when it was back together - no noise.

I adjusted air/fuel, synched the carbs and the bike is running very well.

A happy ending (at least for the time being) to a sordid and epic tale.

Sometimes great things don't work out first time around, I dropped some major clangers too in the early days.

Careful with using car rated tourque wrenches on the M6 cam bolts, they are bastards for stripping - or even worse breaking off inside the head, just when you are buttoning the job up.
I do it by hand with threadlock and replace bolts for new high tensile steel...the bolts can stretch over time and repeated dissasembly.

Thanks for the reply, I had never worked on an aluminum engine before- boy this has been a "quick to screw-up" and steep learning curve for me but I have learned a ton. And yes- spring for new bolts, stretched threads on steel bolts will tear out the threads on bolt holes in an aluminum head.

Kudos on the success!
I'm sure there were some pretty blue words yelling out of the garage during the process but that last ride musta' made them all a distant (but learned from) memory.

So where's the pics darn it? :laugh:

Thanks,

PICS Coming