Serious Problem! Lost bolt! 5th Gen

Let me start off by saying I should have known better. Just as I was taking the cams out, stupid me left the bolts in the cam holders and boom! The valves rocketed the cams into outer space!!! Exaggerating a little bit but, upon removal the cams did jump a little and now one bolt is missing, Worse is I think it dropped down into the crankcase. I have been searching the bike and shop for an hour and no dice.

BTW it is on the rear cylinders 1 & 3

So what should be my plan of attack, I have tried shining a flashlight down and nothing but a sea of gears. I can get my hands on an extendable magnet but, will be a few days. If I still cant find it can I drop the oil pan??? Is there a better way to go about this?

Well I hope I get a warm welcome (despite my lack of better judgement) into the VFR community, I just got this bike last week with 40k miles it's a 99 and hasn't had the valves checked yet, so I checked them and found that all were tight and 3 of them to the point of being out of tolerance. Appreciate all help, I am going to go searching the rest of the night for the bolt and if I can't find it I will start looking into (hopefully with your guidance) tearing into the engine to find my long lost bolt. that I miss so soooo much.

 

Oh man, that really sucks. I don't suppose you could lift it upside down and shake it? I would try the
magnet and see how that works. Get one that is on a bendable shaft so you can move it around. I've not
had the engine apart so can't say how hard that would be, but don't think it would be a walk in the park,
but you may be up against it, and have to pull the oil pan.

Good luck, and keep us posted.

 

I would double and triple check around the garage. If the cam came out that forcefully, I think the bolt would have gotten launched.

 

sad situation

sometimes dropped items can cause damage if the engine turns over and may not show up in the pan. suggest you get a socket on the crank and try rotating clockwise and STOPPING quick if you feel resistance. don't use the starter.
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one time i dropped a small carb clamp nut as i was mounting carbs, went down and into an open valve "clink". tried a few different tricks but had to pull the head, no fun. gaskets hard to find. big waste of time.

 

Last night I checked again, I keep telling myself the same thing that there is no way that it's in the crankcase and must be laying on the floor somewhere. So I will continue to look around.

I ordered two different style magnets and actually found a camera probe on amazon for pretty cheap compared to what they were a few years ago, all should be here tomorrow. We will see, I am going to drain the oil and check with the camera first. I wont be rotating the crankshaft since with my luck the bolt probably found its home wedged into a couple of gears already haha.

Keep the ideas coming, I am tempted to flip this bi*** over and start shaking it like the lady in Airplane

 

Not good!!! I can understand the frustration.

There is another reason not to rotate the crankshaft........ it would make putting the camshaft back in the right timming a bit of a challange (not impossible, but more difficult).

 

So speaking of camshaft install when all is said and done. I could not find the removal of the cams in the service manual. Appears that others have found this info to not be in the book either so I am just going with prior knowledge from belt/chain driven engines. So for this I marked where the teeth mesh with the cam drive timing gear (terminology is a little limited due to my first gear driven engine)??? Also a couple other marks done with a paint pen so they can go back how they came out and then check everything when assembled with my timing marks. For cylinders 2 &4 which are still assembled, I was going to do the same but turn the crankshaft to either get the pistons as low as possible or find a happy medium so that valves are mostly closed so I don't end up having a valve and piston contact each other for some reason. More important for install, if these are interference engines, which it seems like they are. I will check the book for proper install and with all of my paint marks, I don't think I should have an issue on install.

I did another look around the bike inside the plastics to my best ability and no luck still, I am just waiting for the camera to come tomorrow to start scoping out with that, I will keep you all posted on what I find... or don't find.

 

Have a look at service manual 8-28 for reinstall of cams??

 

UPDATE!!! Still no bolt. Good news and bad news, I got my camera probe and started scoping it out. I must say I am 99% sure its not possible for a bolt that size to drop down very far into the crankcase. The clearances between the gears and the block are very narrow, too narrow for a bolt to drop through. For the heck of it I used my flexible magnet and fished all around and again I could only get it so far down into the motor, probe and magnet are about 1/4 inch in diameter. So a bolt with a 1/2 inch flange I just cant see it making its way very far down in there.

It must be in the shop or bike. I am going to really tear apart the shop this time and because I am certain it's not in the motor. I did carefully spin the crankshaft over a dozen times and it spins free and as if there isn't a bolt lodged between some gears. So the only good news is I got a sweet camera and two nice magnets for fishing stuff out.

 

Sounds like potentially good news. Congrats.

 

Could it be in the " v " between the heads . When I changed my thermostat I found a nut a coin and lots of dirt. Good luck

 

On some bikes I bought, I found the "spare" key in the V.

Good luck. It's gotta be in the shop.

You didn't have any open containers of oil did you? I finally found my XL600R engine frame spacer in the oil I drained. I had already pulled a spare out of a box, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the hell happened to it. It was round, and I thought it rolled into another dimension.

 

Found the bolt! After searching the shop emptying every container and sorting it out and moving everything away from the walls it never turned up so it must be in the bike and sure enough it was right next to the head blending into the surroundings just too well. Atleast I got the shop organized and some new tools ‍♂️

 

Doh!

Good news.

 

Yay! Big relief........

 

I bet you won't let that happen again.
Gotta love a happy ending. LOL.

 

it ain't over till clearances are set and cams properly installed and timed.

 

True. But the MIA bolt was found.
So assuming the OP can finish the job, that soothing light at the end of the tunnel is not a freight train coming his way.

 

Got my bike put all back together.

I did have some tips for this job if anyone is interested.

1. For the removal of the camshafts (since it is missing in the online manual) just read through the install section and removal will be easy. (I did this the second time around) the cam holders apear to be fragile so take extra care during removal/install.

2. Its easy to lose hardware, shims, o-rings, barrels so just shove some rags into the deathcrack of the crankcase.

3. Most important, for install of camshafts. Use a straight edge when aligning your timing marks, to make sure they are inline with eachother. Thought of this on the spot and was almost fool-proof.

Dont know if these tips have been shared on here (most likely) im just new here and wanted to share what I came to find out.

Enjoy!

 

Wow happy for you.
Now you can get some sleep.
Here ya go



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