2004 Viffer failure on the drive home from buying it

Hello All,

I was a VFR 750F pilot for many years. Bought a '93 in New Jersey, flew up and rode it 1200 miles home to Texas. I pulled 5 saddle sore 1000's and made a lot of great memories on that machine including taking my now wife on our first date. I sold it 10 years ago, and today I bought a new used one. A budget find for $2300. I think I paid way to much.

On the way home I saw temps up around 235F at a mild 70mph cruise. Previous owner said as I was leaving his drive that it ran hot, but dang!

On the last stretch before I turned down my road, I got into it to hear the VTEC to its thing. There was a strange hesitation around 9K rpm and when I looked back I saw a massive cloud of smoke. It was absolute MASSIVE. When I shut it down in the drive way I noticed it marking its territory with a heavy oil leak. I cranked it up to take it to the barn and as I rounded the corner another huge plume of smoke came out of the exhaust. I shut it down, very sad and come to the form to see if I might get some advice. It currently cranks up fine and sounds fine, unless I let the clutch out, I hear a pretty big rattle. I assume that is the throw out bearing.

Back to the smoke, I'm thinking head gasket, but all the oil leaking makes me think I might have done more damage than it is worth to fix. Where should I start the investigation after it cools down.

 

It's usually pretty hard to kill a VFR! Strip the fairings and let us know where the oil leak is.
I'm going to take a guess that the breather hose is/was blocked and the high revs have caused that to come adrift but before that happened it shot a load of oil into the airbox and made the clouds. Another possibility is if one of the o-rings around the PAIR system has been missed when the cam covers were removed, and allowed oil direct from the cam area to the exhaust. Neither of those is a biggie. Let us know what the oil level is and how the oil looks through the glass. For the high temps (which should be around 180F in the freeway), that may be as simple as a thermostat that is jammed and needs to be replaced; they all do that at some point. A bit involved to do, thanks to the location under the throttle bodies. But check the basics like the coolant level in both the radiator and the reservoir.
For the clutch rattle, mine certainly does that a bit at idle with the lever released, and is much worse if the starter valves need to be synchronised.

 

Thanks for the encouragement. I need it. As the fairings come off it's apparent that this machine was left out side for an extended period of time. I've got one bolt that is spinning is in plastic nut.

I'll take the tank off tomorrow.

 

I'm sorry you had this happen on an almost new VFR.
The cloud: black or white?

 

White cloud of smoke is what was seen. Very Very white.

Got the fairings off today. The expansion tank is basically empty. So that could be the cause of the overheating. I need to flush the whole system, not sure how hard it is to burp the system if I were to drain and fill.

No obvious oil leak was seen. Some light weeping on the head to block mating crack, but not really what I'd call a leak. There was some oily residue one the wire bundle adjacent to the expansion tank.

The oil peep window is solid black. I can't see a thing in there. Next I will drain it to see what the oil looks like.

I also removed the tank and airbox. Lot of debris on top of the filter. Removing the filter reveled a very oily box. Opening the throttle valves revealed visible oil on top of the intake valves. Obviously the source of the white smoke. I need to investigate what @Terry Smith mentioned, and the blocked breather hose. I have a service manual in route from ebay.

Thanks again for the encouragement.

 

White is steam (water). Did you check oil level before take off and at home. Check compression. It could sound like a blown head gasket - and probably also a plugged breather tube as mentioned by Terry.


https://www.vfrdiscussion.com/index...onda-vfr-service-manual-optimized-bookmarked/

 

It seems foolish to admit, but due to the sight glass being opaque, I didn't really know how much oil was in there.

 

The inside of your airbox looks pretty oily; if the crankcase oil level is too high you will get lots more blowing out of the breather and into the airbox; that is through the chunky hose leading off the rear cam cover. Once the oil gets to the airbox it will get sucked into the combstion chamber and will produce plenty of smoke. My suggestion is to drain the oil and see how much you had, and replace it (with a new filter). Should take 3.1L when the filter is also replaced. A little light oil mist inside the airbox is normal.

Your comment about oil weep between the head and block would be rare but if there is any oil leakage into the spark plug tunnel that will be visible around the drain holes and can spread along that joint (seen that on my ST1300).

You can download the manual from here: https://www.vfrdiscussion.com/index...onda-vfr-service-manual-optimized-bookmarked/