New Gen 3 member - Rebuild Project

Hey Guys so I thought I’d introduce myself here,

I’m Chris I've recently come to these forums as I've become the new owner of a 1993 VFR750 in very poor condition, I love the engineering that went into these engines and more-so the sound of the V4; I found one stashed in a barn in terrible condition. When I initially saw the bike my first thoughts were "yeah this is what I am looking for a bike that needs work" so after waiting a week I hired a van and went to pick it up. When I got there and actually got the bike out of the shed I looked at it I got cold feet, the bike was in-terrible condition, it has been low-sided, it had only the front headlight and fairing section with speedo showing 64xxx kms, the oil looked brand new still nice and golden but all side fairings and tail section had been removed and the ignition key has been lost.

Apparently it was in running condition before it was stored and was destined to be fixed but that never happened. From what I can tell is it has been outdoors and then at some stage covered under a plastic sheet, then probably relocated to the shed. I'm led to believe that it was left outside somewhere close by the beach for a period of time as alot of the engine casings were heavily corroded and any metal parts rusting. Any-way I left that day and took the van back and went home without the bike.

A week later I couldn't stop thinking about the bike so I phoned the bloke back and went and picked it up this time for good. i didn't get much time to work on it that weekend as I traveled to Melbourne for world superbike and then up the coast the following weekend for a small getaway. I could get the engine to crank over (Just) probably due to lack of oil in the cylinders. Knowing that it would not crank over due to no petrol atleast I could verify the engine wasn’t seized.

In my spare time in the evenings I continued to remove the airbox which has a K&N high-flown filter (win!) plugs which are dirty but still usable and show no signs of lean mixture or overheating even taking into the high flow filter. I dumped the coolant in it which was very clean no rust full light green coolant minus the amount that had evaporated from the overflow (Win! this was good, having good clean fluids through-out the engine).

At this point I put my boroscope down the spark plug hole which I could get a pretty decent image of the top of the cylinder; and It looks as any engine would with 64xxxkms on the clock (good).

Working in the evening and spare time I have removed the carbs and this is where my project begins. The carbs need rebuilding as you can see in the photos they are gunked up dried up and rusted up. I have since got a ultrasonic cleaner with a 1:1 water / vinegar mixture been going through each carb 1 x 1 to get them all clean again, I still have 2 more individual carbs to go and then they are back on the bike ill then run a compression test. Then Ill add fuel test to see if it will actually start.

I have been trying to do a detailed video of the carb clean up rebuild process and hope to put this on youtube (eventually) and I will update as much of this project on VFRD as I can while reaching out to VFRD community for help and knowledge.

Below are some pictures so far

Cheers Chris!

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Above The day I picked it up

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The day i picked it up showing corroded clutch casing

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Dash

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Spark Plugs

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Carbs

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Dirty Carb bowls with drain screw rusted over

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Dirty Carbs float chambers / jets (small jet removed)

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Cleaned Jets from the ultrasonic cleaner

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Cleaned bowl from the ultrasonic cleaner

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Cleaned carb internals from the ultrasonic cleaner

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2 separated cleaned, silicone sprayed slides and rubber seals then reassembled (did-not adjust the butterfly adjustment)

Welcome Chris, just needs the TLC you're giving it. Look forward to more developments.

Sent from my HTC_PN071 using Tapatalk

 Cheers Forbes,

I will put all further updates in a blog post on VFRD (once I figure out how to)

Interesting project! Gonna check out soon your progress. Enjoy

Looks like it has a lot of "potential".

As in needs a lot of work but could be cool again.

Good luck with the project. :beer:

So while I had the carbs off I did the valve clearance as well, while.this was a pretty strait forward task I did struggle a bit, as this is the first time I will ever done a valve clearance check on anything. The first day was a complete waste of time as I was too hung over to function so after getting the covers off and poking around with the feeler gauge and tapping the engine with a spanner like a useless prick I covered it up and called it a day.

After a good rest feeling refreshed I gave it a second go. I had printed 2 sets of instructions  from a the vfr manual and the Intercepter printed which had been scanned from original. After getting a clearer copy and realising to line the cams up correctly I had alot more success. 

Attached are the results and some pictures of my findings. The longest part was removing the gasket glue, and if I was to make any recommendations if you can get a new second gasket set for cheap it'd be worth the investment as I spent nearly a day cleaning the 2 gaskets before applying new glue which was the longest part. With new gaskets you could do this in 40mins start to finish.

I have attached my readings from my bike where all but 1 is with-in spec attached is also the sheet template I made up for recording the vale readings for anyone to use its a pdf to print and pen your readings on. Ill also upload the .Xls for anyone who wishes to use / change modify for any other V4 bike 

93 VFR VALVE ADJUSTMENT SHEET 190317.pdf

V4 VALVE ADJUSTMENT SHEET.pdf

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On my 4th gen, checked 1st time around 90k km's, I also had only 1 out of spec (gap a wee bit too large).

Yeah, Honda designed a good lump here!

So after getting g everything back together and putting a decent t battery on it - IT'S ALIVE!!! it actually kicks over and runs, the idle and everything seems normal, however it doesn't appear to be running on all cylinders it was quite lumpy and a bit rattley but run under its own power the choke works fine and it's starts easily without choke after running it for a short 2 minutes I felt the exhaust headers and only 2 pipes one from the front and one from the back were hot. when I look Into the carbs the slides on cylinder 3&4 move and jump around when running and the slides on 1&2 don't jump or move under vacuum at all I can confirm that cylinder 1 is definitely working and I can confirm that on the last run cylinder 2 was working. I am getting spark on all cylinders it does not stall when cylinder 2,3,4 spark lead is removed but when cyl1 is removed the engine will die. Also when the slide from cylinder 1 is pushed open  the will cause the engine to  a bog down (more fuel getting sucked Into the cylinder) I did a bench sync with a feeler gauge when I put them back together but have not done a vacuum sync yet on the bike  as I don't have all the parts I need to be able to do it. I removed leads from every coil and cleaned the terminals and this definitely made it smoother it felt like it was running on possibly 3 cylinders. It doesn't seem consistent, I am unsure if it's spark/ coil related or if it's vacuum related I know I have spark on all cylinders as I checked them when I did the compression test. I can also hear each one ticking when the rubber plug lead is removed when running.

Does anybody else have any ideas ?? Is it symptoms of vacuum sync-out or not enough spark or something else  I have overlooked ?