Repairing cylinder barrel

Hi All. Had an unfortunate accident in the garage a couple of days ago. I wasn't at home when my good lady's car drove itself into the garage, knocked over my BMW GS into my Zephyr 750 with the following result...



GS seems made of tough stuff... don't think it's even scratched!

The damage is insured, and I have an engineer from the insurance company coming round to discuss repair costs. The barrel has 8 miles on it since it was rebored, new pistons etc... I've just finished building the bike and, apart from a quick test ride haven't put it on the road yet.

I can see three possibilities for repair, all of which involve stripping the top end and removing the barrel.

a) Weld repair the fins, clean up and repaint.
b) Find a replacement barrel, clean, rebore and repaint
c) Find a replacement barrel, clean, swap liners and repaint.

After any of the above, rebuild the top end with new gaskets etc.

Any thoughts on which would be the best way to go?

No need for advice on replacing the wife; after 30 years she's a keeper

Get the insurance money and then glue them back on, sanding and repaint?

Can try my JB Weld trick.
Steve

Several moments of silence, please.

:ohmy:

daveo wrote: Several moments of silence, please.

:ohmy:

Annoying, but nobody died... it's only stuff when all is said and done. And a Zephyr at that! :whistle:

So Steve... I did a search for your posts with JB weld and found 5 pages of them... I gather you're a fan!

Insurance are settling for a silly amount of money and I now have a spare used barrel... anybody have experience of swapping liners? How difficult is it?

Stu23 wrote: So Steve... I did a search for your posts with JB weld and found 5 pages of them... I gather you're a fan!

Insurance are settling for a silly amount of money and I now have a spare used barrel... anybody have experience of swapping liners? How difficult is it?

Good move Stu. Although I have used JB weld to fix a LOT of things, I don't see it holding very well to fix broken fins. You may be able to heat the block in the oven, then knock the liners out, then carefully re-install them in the new block. I have never done this, but I would not be afraid to try it, given the circumstances. I think the manual shows how to R&R the cylinder liners.
My EX-wife needed a car lined like bumper cars at the carnival. Always ran up on the curb at QT taking out the bumper cover in the process.

Some liners will press out easily some won't. I've had them almost fall out on their own. Others I'v had to use a block of wood to tap them out. The idea is to heat the block to expand it so the liners will come out easier. This can be done using a torch heating the area around the liner to be removed. It doesn't take a lot of heat to do this. Using a oven would work but then you'll have to handle a hot block while knocking out the liners.
As for the JB weld, it works as long as the block is to be painted. In one of my clips it broke only because I pried off the head at that point. I repaired it again and it's holding up just fine. Can't even tell it's there. If the 1015 liners would fit in my 903 block I would have used it instead. :whistle:
Steve

My wife drove through our garage door twice. She didn't wait long enough for the door to raise high enough. I've used JB weld on a lot of non critical area's with success. It's great stuff if used properly.

I am used to resleeve cylinders using heat gun and cardboard box lined from inside with two or three layers of cooking foil fixed with aluminum tape. Setup I used for resleeving looked completely similar to one on attached pictures. The advantage of it is that it's "semi automatic": you put cylinders on some blocks (I used pieces of rectangular aluminum tube) and once cylinders are hot enough you'll hear the sound of falling sleeves. If some of sleeves "do not wish" to fall out, tap them using wooden block as Steve already said.

Sleeve installation is even easier. The only things about resleeveing you have to keep in mind:

1) After resleeving upper surface of cylinder block must be leveled (machined).
2) You have to measure sleeves according to service manual to make sure that current sleeves in current cylinder block are in specs.

I'll just add that when I was cleaning the cylinder block of my KZ-1000 to get the majority of the dirt off it I immersed the block in a sink full of hot water and soap. I started scrubbing away and after a couple of minutes I noticed 3 of the 4 sleeves had lifted out of the block more or less on their own. Pulled the block out of the water after noticing this and sat there thinking okay, now what? Well I decided to refill the sink with hot water and put the block back in. After a few minutes I just pushed the sleeves back in until they stopped. It was no big deal as I was taking the block in to have the cylinders bored out anyway, but it surprised me how easy they came out and went back in.
Rick H.

Suzuki GS blocks and sleeves are color coded in order to selectively fit them together with the proper amount of interference fit. Kawasaki is more loose with their tolerances it seems. If anyone swaps sleeves I'd be sure to measure out of round and taper afterwards to make sure everything is okay.