hi all,
I have had an 83 xt600 for around a year and love it. all sorts of fun in deserts in W.A aus, then had it trucked to NSW where I now live. I rode to Melbourne (1000km) and it seized. I have taken it apart and found the piston to be, well, a bit melted. as far as I can tell the cylinder can be rebored, piston replaced, bearings replaced etc. is a rebuild worth it? I changed the oil and filter before i left ( ignoring obvious 'must maintain bike better or at least keep fluids topped up' maintainance) The bike hasn't been treated badly (aside from me). the bike is in bits now and i have access to tools I need to do it. I am wondering though, is it worth the time and expense to rebuild the engine? I am intending to have the thing around for a while and hopefully do quite a few kms. I know anything can be fixed but given the age and purpose of these bikes, should I be thinking about something a little, well, less stressed. I would appreciate any input. thanks.

If you like the bike why not? You know it, and it's seen you OK. An option could be a replacement engine. Don't know what its like for imports/breakers where you are, but a newer engine from a low mileage import could be an option.
They are good grin factor bike.
Neil

they certainly are! Im just wondering, given its age what should I be expecting to go wrong/ break. whats the lifespan of these bikes? it says its done 44000km and Im not sure I believe that. In terms of metal degredation etc.

Search back through the posts using search option, there's some horror stories and also some high milers, a few 100k+ bikes. Is the rest of her in fair enough shape?

Hi, Im about to put a replacement engine in my 86 tenere´ The old 1vj engine has 120.000km on it now and I probably would have restored it if I hadn´t found a 3tb for a reasonable price.If the bike otherwise is in a fair enough condition why not fix it. Sure you can buy a newer,but they brake too

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Places to be and things to do, see you all out there!!

Cheers.

Tom.

Think how much it will cost to fix weighed against how much a similar bike is to buy ??

Personally if its a rat bike, sell it in pieces on ebay, save a little and get something which isnt going to fall apart when you hit a rock

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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

well... it is indeed a rat bike but I have decided, perhaps irrationally, to go for the rebuild. So far; new bearings, gaskets seals obviously, rebore, piston etc, recondition head, cam chain, oil pump, which was the cause of all this and not my ineptitude, valves etc. Once that is done ( I might even paint it (!)) I will do other fun things like chain sprockets, front wheel bearings air filter and any of many other things I find that need replacing.
I have to say that without crawling through this site I wouldnt know half the things I do now about the innards of these machines, and have come across most of the problems described within. like how the hell do I get the bearing off the crankshaft... freezer fridge get the shop to do it etc...
Many thanks for all this.

the experience and knowledge gained are well worth it.

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Patrick passed Dec 2018. RIP Patrick!

i am hesistant to say too much before i hear it running but.... it has so far been an amazing experience. i think I know what everything does now and all those noises make sense. I spent a lot of nervous hours in the desert with this bike ( I found a lot of red dirt in the head) and I think I know what it means.. I'm waiting for a new piston and then the rebore, found the bearings and gaskets and I'm learning a lot. I think the expense is well worth it. I could have bought another bike for what I paid so far but.... I think I need to post some pics... thank you all..

measure everything to spec before reassembly and oil it well too.

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Patrick passed Dec 2018. RIP Patrick!

thanks for that, I'll certainly do that. the previous owner didn't have an air filter at all. hence the red dust. to be fair though that stuff goes through anything... one thing though, I haven't decided on rebuilding the crankshaft. there is minor ( within tolerance ) lateral movement in the conrod. everything else seems ok. there is no major wear in the bearings either. I'm replacing them ( all eight ) because I'm there already and I don't want to do this again for a long while. And yeah, the best part of all this, if expensive, was finding a very broken oil pump.

Chopper511 how did the rebuild go.
I'm currently doing my XT 600e `96 mod currently.
Talking about seizing , I seized my XT550 some years ago. I'd just rebuilt it and on a cold winters morning (12deg C) running 40 weight oil it seized. Bugger hey. That's what you get for running heavy iol in cold conditions.
Therefore the XT 550 got rebuilt again.. it then went to Frazer island and a few more good trips before it was sold.

Where did you source your parts. Here in ozz they are quite expensive relative to the US or UK.

Iv been in your shoes many times...

usually when you've just spent £300 on a topend rebuild, the gearbox and clutch go next...

You fix them and then the main bearings start going

You fix them and then the big end goes and the suspension starts giving out..


You end up building a brandnew bikes at 3x the cost of getting a good one.

If you enjoy the spanner time and want to learn then go for it.. be prepared for irritation and bills though.

__________________
Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

It's fair to say that my current XT 600e has done a lot of work.
The guy I bought it off had done a trip to Cape York (nothern tip of Australia) I don't believe he treated the bike well therefore when he arrived back in the big city it was necessary to undertake considerable repairs.
He showed me an long list of reciepts and spoke of reboring, head reconditioning, bearing and gear changes etc. None the less the bike looked nasty.
I didn't necessarily believe the previous owner had actually done all the work mentioned but as I bought the bike for a bargain price ($1750.00 in 2000 so 7 years ago, the bike was only 4 years old at the time)
Soon after buying the bike it developed a very nasty bottom end knock. This ended up being a very poorly fitted keyway on the counterbalance shaft. I filed the keyways on both shaft and gear, made a new oversize key and used a healthy volume of loctite and away I went.
7 years on and about 50000KM the bike developed another very nasty bang (not really a knock). I expected this was bigend as I couldn't confirm what was repaired or the workmanship involved. If the key incident was and guide the workmanship was poor.
So the bike was stripped.
To my surprise the head gasket was blown which would account for the bang.
The 2 piston compression rings were aligned which would acount for the exessive blowpast and lack of compression.
The previous owner had rebored it, 1mm over, it truely does appear he did perform much of the work he mentioned, unfortunatly the workmanship is the primary issue, eg. volumes of silicon rather than "O" rings and gaskets..

The bottom end is tidy, There are 2 concerns I have,
1. lateral movement in the bigend is out of tolerance..
2. The bike would occasionally jump from 1st gear to neutral or second to neutral.
The gearbox is pandoras box to me. I havn't split the case yet.
Is it worth delving into the gearbox or could there be someother more obvious issue causing the bike to jump out of gear. (Should I start a thread for this?)

Any advice would be much appreciated.

New thread.. hmm, i suggest a new forum

__________________
Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.