I think my engine blew up :(

Well coming home from families house on Christmas eve my oil pressure symbol lite up while I was on the freeway, I immediately slowed down and pulled off to the shoulder but I could hear it knocking and actually could feel it then the engine suddenly stalled out and died. I checked the oil and it looked funny but wasn't low, looked almost a gold color. When I tried to start it again the clicking noise like the battery was low is all I was getting. I called progressive roadside assistance and had it towed home.

The battery isn't dead though, I took the belt cover off and cannot turn the engine with a breaker bar per my neighbors suggestion. I don't understand how it can blow up like that without any problems before hand. With Christmas bills and all I am just going to ride the Aprilia for a while and get it looked at in a while but I am pretty sure I am screwed anyway so I might try to take things apart myself. I don't think i could possible make it worse.

Has anyone had to do any major work on the engine before, and did I do something that caused this? The water temperature was normal when it happened, for that matter its never overheated before either. Just at a loss and broken hearted that my baby is sick.

Sounds like coolant got into the engine oil. Check your coolant level and it also sounds like you need to change your oil and filter to be sure.

I will check the coolant tonight, but if the engine is frozen and wont turn anymore then it has to be rebuilt right?

Thanks Dennis

Oh no, sorry to hear. Gold/brown oil does sound like a water/oil mix! Hopefully there hasn't been too much damage

While you have the oil drained, remove the spark plugs and spray a little WD-40 into each spark plug hole and then tray to turn the engine over by hand.

What ever you try, it sounds like you will need to take the scooter to Honda for repairs. Unless you’re a master mechanic and have the Honda tools for a possible engine rebuild.

From what I have read on this link it sounds terminal, an engine rebuild looks as if it is on the cards. My guess is that the engine has hydrolocked. (Google it if you need to).
I don't know if you have the necessary skills to do all the work that will be involved so the advice I would give is this.

Don't strip it down and then take a box of bits to a mechanic to rebuild your engine. Usually no-one likes to have to put anything back together that someone else has stripped down. In the long run it could cost you more in labour charges as the mechanic spends additional time looking for parts and the correct nuts and bolts that haven't been bagged or labeled when stripped down.
Perhaps it is 'Bight the Bullet time!'

Perhaps not the best start for the New Year, good luck with it.

Cheers,

What year is your SWing? If 2002, then maybe consider parting it out - if 2008 with ABS, then maybe consider getting it fixed. Don't be locked into repairing it - while you may love it - there are others out there looking for love!

Its a 2004 non ABS model, but I only have 29,000 miles on it.

I checked the coolant last night after some plastic dis-assembly to access and it was not low. I really don't understand how this happened but I don't think I'll will be repairing it since I have the Aprilia Mana as well. The silverwing will be missed though. I still would like to know why this happened so I don't make any maintenance mistakes on the Aprilia and shorten its life.

I expected it to last longer than this honestly and I am a little frustrated but I know sometimes the old saying holds true, **** happens and there's nothing you can do to prevent it. My neighbor is a car mechanic and he checked the oil and thinks its has water in it to, but also advised that the water may not appear low and it doesn't take much water mixing in the oil to cause this. He also thinks the oil pump could have failed resulting in no oil pressure making the light come on but since I was running 6000rpm on the freeway when it happened can do alot of damage in short order.

He agreed to help me take it apart if I wanted to but said it would probably be pretty pricy to fix.

My friend Michael who is in the picture on the top of the website at the moment has almost 46,000 miles on his and no problems. I guess all in all I came out pretty good though, paid 4500 for it 2.5 years ago and rode 27,000 of the 29,000 miles presently on it. Going to leave it for now and cancel the tag/insurance and think it over before I decide on what to do with it. Get some price quotes.

Thanks Everyone!

I will stay around here even if I am only a Aprilia Mana and Chinese scooter rider now

I can't believe by the way that my Chinese 150cc is still running, its got 26,600 miles presently and is almost 3 years old. From everything I read after buying it I expected it to blow up in a few thousand miles lol.... We shall see since I'll be on it alot more again.

tarmacburner2 wrote:

From what I have read on this link it sounds terminal, an engine rebuild looks as if it is on the cards. My guess is that the engine has hydrolocked. (Google it if you need to).
I don't know if you have the necessary skills to do all the work that will be involved so the advice I would give is this.

Don't strip it down and then take a box of bits to a mechanic to rebuild your engine. Usually no-one likes to have to put anything back together that someone else has stripped down. In the long run it could cost you more in labour charges as the mechanic spends additional time looking for parts and the correct nuts and bolts that haven't been bagged or labeled when stripped down.
Perhaps it is 'Bight the Bullet time!'

Perhaps not the best start for the New Year, good luck with it.

Cheers,

Oh no I wouldn't do that to any mechanic

My neighbor is a car mechanic and agreed to help me if I decide to, but I don't know just yet what I'll do.

Yeah, I was wondering later why the oil pressure light came on. I would have expected the oil pump to keep enough pressure even when the oil had water in it.

The oil pump is chain driven, could it have broken... or maybe the pump drive shaft broke... or the pressure relief valve stuck closed... all I would like to think unlikely If it was my bike, I'd have know what caused the engine failure...

You could try searching for a second hand engine rather than repairing...

It would be interesting to know what failed in the engine.
A used engine could be a good move as long as you know its history.

I had very good success on my helix. The engine failed rather then rebuilding I found a wrecked 04 motor that I bought and had the shop make the motor switch I moved from a motor with 31,000 miles to 2400 miles. Because there are a multitude of opportunities for human error in a rebuild I prefer a a Honda factory assembly. My thought would be to look for a wrecked bike you could buy dirt cheap.

papa johns wrote:

I had very good success on my helix. The engine failed rather then rebuilding I found a wrecked 04 motor that I bought and had the shop make the motor switch I moved from a motor with 31,000 miles to 2400 miles. Because there are a multitude of opportunities for human error in a rebuild I prefer a a Honda factory assembly. My thought would be to look for a wrecked bike you could buy dirt cheap.

Your Helix engine failed at 31,000? So am I around the normal life span for motorcycle engines then with 29,000?

I will look around for one, start watching craigslist for sure.

RArch wrote:

If it was my bike, I'd have know what caused the engine failure...

Yeah I am thinking I have got to know what happened because it doesn't make any sense to me at all. It was running perfect up to this point.

The intake manifold cracked changing the air fuel mixture. Had I know to inspect and replace this simple easily repaired plastic between the carb and engine I think that helix would still be running on it's original engine IMHO.
As it is that Helix is approaching 50,000.

My 2002 Swing's water pump is mounted to the engine and is driven by a shaft extending into the crankcase. The shaft of the water pump has a seal to prevent oil from mixing with the coolant/water. Your seal could have failed and water from your water pump could have leaked into you crankcase mixing with the oil. Honda does not sell the seal separately, but requires you to purchase the complete water pump. I have an oil leak somewhere near the water pump, and am attempting to replace the water pump to crankcase seal (O-ring), but now I am worried that it may be my water pump that is going bad. The Honda mechanic gave me tips on inspecting the water pump to determine if the seal has gone. I will update this post when I remove the pump sometime in January when my seals come in. I may just buy a new water pump. Honda price is $140. Not bad.

I've seen several used motor's on eBay recently in the $300 - $500 range.
A few of them included the belt case & rear gear box.

The simplest and cheapest repair is to buy a used engine on eBay. When I used to have my Goldwing shop (refurbishing dead GL1100s) I usually just replaced an engine with bad internals with a used engine. Used engines are usually reasonably priced and swapping an engine is an easy job. I could change one in a GL1100 Goldwing in less than three hours including removing the bad engine.
In the case of acworthpatrick's engine I'd suspect either the oil pump failed or it's drive shaft broke. Coolant contamination could have done the damage too, oil pumps don't pump water very well.It could also have been a coolant pump faiure that caused a seized engine. The oil pressure light probably came on when the main bearings or rods began to seize and restricted oil flow. Normally a heat seized engine will free up when it cools down. It's still frozen so I doubt it's a normal overheated piston that freezes in the cylinder, more like something's gone in the crank or rods.
As for engine life there are many Silverwings that have far exceeded 100,000 miles and are still running. My '93 Goldwing had 190,000 miles on it when I sold it two years ago. It's still running just fine for its new owner. A friend of mine has just at 400,000 miles on his Goldwing 1500 but he did have to replace a clutch at 300,000.
I'd sure find a replacement engine, usually 300-500 on eBay and get that SW running again. It's a lot better bike than a Majesty, in my not-so-humble-opinion.

Thanks everyone!
I will start looking around for one but at least for a few months I am probably not gonna do anything with it and just ride the Aprilia. Maybe once I get all the holiday bills paid off and some tax return money back I'll start figuring out what I am going to do with this thing.

Well if it's of any consolation to you I might be interested in buying the cylinder head, with valves, cams and hardware from your old engine.

That is unless exavid thinks that the head would have suffered damage during a bottom end seize.

Tim

I will keep that in mind Cosmic - but its gonna be a while before I take it anywhere just to see what the damage is and decide what to do with it.

I doubt there'd be any damage to the head. It's pretty easy to check one for warpage but since there was apparently no overheat during the seizure it's unlikely that the head would warp. The only thing to be careful of would be the valve stems and guides that could have heated up from lack of oil.

If water did get in the oil it is not so much the water that does the damage but the Antifreeze, Antifreeze will kill engine bearings fast ! I would bet you could tare the engine down, Get the crank turned and install new bearing and it would run like new again,

acworthpatrick wrote:

I can't believe by the way that my Chinese 150cc is still running, its got 26,600 miles presently and is almost 3 years old. From everything I read after buying it I expected it to blow up in a few thousand miles lol.... We shall see since I'll be on it alot more again.

I can't believe my little TaoTao 150cc scooter is as good as it is, Like you everything I read and what people told me " dont buy it " " It will be junk inless then a year " just is not the case ! I would definitely purchase another

I feel the same way about my Kymco. It's a great scoot' and has been bullet proof.
I've had some running and reliability problems with my Honda Elite scoot' that has me reconsidering why Honda's have such good public support.

Patrick,

Here is the Kelly Blue Book info:

http://www.kbb.com/motorcycles/honda/fsc600a-silver-wing-abs/2004-honda-fsc600a-silver-wing-abs/valuetype/?categoryname=scooter

I'm not sure what an engine would cost but I wonder if it is worth fixing when you have to pay for the engine, have it shipped, and then have someone install it. It might be in your best interest to part it out. I'm very surprised to hear this happen to your SWing. I have a 2007 and have had no problem and I very rarely ever hear of a problem with the SWing. That is one of the big reasons people choose a SWing over the B650. It is a very reliable bike.

Sorry to hear of this though. I remember when I first started this site, I think I started a thread to have owners post things that were wrong with the SWing, and it seemed the best we could come up with were things like, the stock shield not being good enough, or a rattle here or there. I don't think the thread is even on the site anymore. It was such small things that were reported and nothing serious.

Best of luck to you on what you do.

Swapping an engine isn't all that diffcult and doesn't take specialized tools. You can find a good used engine for $500 or less which isn't such a big expense as rebuilding the one you have. I'd get a replacement engine, install it and sell or part out the old engine. You should be able to reap enough parts to sell that would greatly defray the cost of the used engine. Here's a decent looking engine for $500 with free shipping on eBay. This one comes complete with the whole drive system which means an even easier engine swap because you can change out the whole thing and have even more parts to sell.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/02-03-04-05-06-07-08-Honda-Silverwing-FSC-600-FSC600-Engine-Motor-Runs-Excellent-/271062747646?pt=Motorcycles_Parts_Accessories&hash=item3f1c9949fe&vxp=mtr

Used engine has been acquired and will be going into the scooter tomorrow. This ain't gonna be cheap for sure, but worth fixing to me.

Glad to hear! If I was in your area I would be able to help out!

I am letting the good guys at Motosource do it for me. He's going to tear the other motor down sometime in the next month to see what happened to it. It was weird seeing the motor without the CVT case attached, I didn't know it was two separate pieces.

He did mention that the Fram oil filter that was on it seemed to have fallen apart inside, when he removed it the paper part inside was all sucked up in the middle - he thinks thats what happened to the engine and stopped the oil flow suddenly.

A few years ago Chrysler sent out a letter to Dodge Cummins truck owners not to use Fram filters because of poor construction that can block the oil flow and because of some Fram filter media that disintigrated and blocked oil lines.
I haven't used a Fram filter for over 30 years, they once were good filters but no longer. The Fram filters that go into a filter cannister as some older cars and motorcycles use are okay, the only ones that have the problem is the spin on type. I like Honda, Wix, and NAPA Gold.

http://www.tobycreek.org/oil_filters/fram.shtml

You might want to hang on to that filter and contact Fram. If a filter of theirs failed they may be liable for the damage. If you still have it, get a statement from your mechanic and down load copies of the 1995 Fram filter recall. It shouldn't be hard to get Fram to agree to pay for your damage. If they reject you it doesn't cost much to sue them in small claims court.

I had a similar issue with a fram filter on my mustang never used one from them on!

exavid wrote:

A few years ago Chrysler sent out a letter to Dodge Cummins truck owners not to use Fram filters because of poor construction that can block the oil flow and because of some Fram filter media that disintigrated and blocked oil lines.
I haven't used a Fram filter for over 30 years, they once were good filters but no longer. The Fram filters that go into a filter cannister as some older cars and motorcycles use are okay, the only ones that have the problem is the spin on type. I like Honda, Wix, and NAPA Gold.

http://www.tobycreek.org/oil_filters/fram.shtml

You might want to hang on to that filter and contact Fram. If a filter of theirs failed they may be liable for the damage. If you still have it, get a statement from your mechanic and down load copies of the 1995 Fram filter recall. It shouldn't be hard to get Fram to agree to pay for your damage. If they reject you it doesn't cost much to sue them in small claims court.

He believes they are totally liable for the damage now, the filter was cut in half yesterday and totally collapsed inside and blocked the oil from exiting the filter

He said he's been using them in his shop for years and will stop ASAP. But advised me to contact them as they should pay for everything. I ordered a 3 pack of Honda OEM filters yesterday afternoon from honda parts direct and will only use them from now on. I've been using fram filters for the past 10 years but I went last night and bought a FORD factory filter for my wifes minivan to. No more FRAM. Going to get the pictures and a written diagnosis of the failure, I'll share with you all when I get the pictures of the filter from him. What a mess

Please do share the info with us! I have a Fram on my Wing right now! I read the link above but it is 15 years old so I figured Fram had gotten their act together... This is important information that all of us need to know! Thanks.

They don't all fail but I'd recommend staying away from them just because. You might want to cut open the one on your scoot when you change again and take a look to see if it compares with the ones in the oil filter post.

Thanks for letting us know, hope the replacement engine works out and that Farm foot the bill.

This situation was brought up on Maxi Scooter site. Interesting link was presented.

Fram

Very interesting reading and a bit reassuring to Fram users. I guess oil filters are as volatile as the type of oil used...

I have not decided what I will do in future, will wait to hear final results here. I suppose there could be extenuating circumstances that could cause a filter failure, such as extended oil change interval or perhaps some mechanical failure that spiked oil pressure up near the 340 psi burst pressure? Who knows.

I can say nothing " extenuating " happened to my mustang and the Fram failed close to what acworthpatrick has had, lucky I caught in time and no engine damged was done

Cause of the filter element coming apart is still unknown but I got to go by yesterday afternoon and see my silverwing running

New engine is installed and Monday they will begin putting the bike back together. If all goes well I'll have her home by Thursday. Can't Wait!!!!!!

acworthpatrick wrote:

Cause of the filter element coming apart is still unknown but I got to go by yesterday afternoon and see my silverwing running

New engine is installed and Monday they will begin putting the bike back together. If all goes well I'll have her home by Thursday. Can't Wait!!!!!!

Super great !!!!!!!! thank you for the update !

patrick,

Good news on your scoot. Keep us informed on how all of it goes and about your first ride.

Gonna be a long week of waiting for sure, but I'll keep everyone updated. Bike is really a work of art to see it without the plastics, pretty big computer there on the side to. I was suprised.

Excellent news! Glad to hear engine is installed et al! Keep us posted; we will keep fingers crossed too!

Not surprised to hear about trouble with Fram filters. I used to drive older water-cooled VW's and a couple of members of that club reported Fram filters bursting from the pressure.

Happy day, I get to pick the silverwing up this afternoon!

The old engine will be looked at before being turned into the salvage yard as a core to determine why the oil filter failed. My mechanic doesn't feel I have a very fair chance at people able to say for certain the oil filter caused the problem. I appreciate him for doing all this work for me - I've done alot of website and IT work for his shop these past two years so he didn't charge me much labor for all this work. Put a new drive belt in this engine as well. Engine came from a 2006 with 17,000 miles on it.

Nice to have skills to trade cause this would have been almost 2000.00 USD otherwise

Can't wait to ride it today!!!!!!!!

So glad to hear this! , nice weather this week in the south for sure!

Going to be 72 on Saturday so I am hoping for no issues and I can take it out for a nice long ride in the mountains

Ya same here mid 70s! Ride is in my future this weekend

Wish we were closer together, be fun to get together and ride this weekend.