You read that right... She's dead. At least for now. Some of you already know what happened, but for those that don't... let's bring you all up to speed, eh?
Was on the freeway after about 2 hours running about 80mph max most of the time. Hovering around 8000rpm and humming along nicely... then it happened.
She just cut out. No power... sounding like a 250... about to die but still sputtering along at about 65-70. I was 10 miles outside of anything with a lit area and a decent amount of population and it had just dropped about 15 degrees on an already cold ride in to visit the little lady.
I thought it lost a stick coil because it was still running... just not healthily. That was until I slowly went by a truck and saw yellow flickering off of the trailer... I look down to see a 3 foot flame coming from my tailpipe. "Come on baby... don't light on fire.... just get me to civilization." I remember saying.
She was going... but barely... maybe 6 minutes later I noticed the temp starting to climb. This was not good. "I'm sorry girl... just get me 3 more miles and we'll put you to bed." I said as I shook my head and pet the side of her tank. She was hating life... but damned if I didn't see the lights of fuel stops and fast food joints ahead of me!
Ahead.. side of the road and pulled off... a truck with a tow rig, lights flashing, working. A little further up I look and see a couple more rigs pulled to the side when, ""BAM! wiggle jerk..!!"" After my butt let go of the seat of my already dying motorcycle I realized I had just run over a doomed truckers tread the obviously blown tire the tow rig was changing. Thank the Gods I was still upright... and barely making this last mile.
I look down to see the temp now climbing up over 200* and fast. I pull to the shoulder about 1/4 mile from the off-ramp I was hoping to make it to, dropped her to about 45mph, and cruised 6th gear all the way in... kept her spinning enough to get rolling after the stop sign... and shut her down in the parking lot of a Chevron Station. White smoke (turned out to be a mix of oil and coolant) spewed from the tail pipe.
Called my lady and tell her the bad news.. "NOOO!!!" she says. And I'm just bummin'... Luckily her roommate was on that side of town. I asked the manager at Denny's if I could move her around back for the night. And we got home.
Preliminary tear down to the throttle bodies yesterday revealed the culprits. And further tear down today after getting my truck down to where I was and then the bike to the only other guy besides me to touch her revealed some optimistic views... but we're not out of the woods yet.
With luck the motor will be out by this weekend and we'll see the full extent of the damage.
I do not know which direction I'm going to go with it. Whether it will become a track only bike, or a newly race tuned street monster. But either way we are going to be doing some engine modding while it's out and torn apart. Needless to say I'm going to be calling Kawasaki and finding out anything I can about a 20,000 mile, meticulously maintained, bike dropping valves at 8000rpm.
Here are the photos...
Bright sides... No metal bits or shards in the oil or pan and no shards or metal in the cams. We'll see what the real damage is when the cams come out.
#4 intake valves
Only metal I found was in the airbox.
Linear Mode
