FZR 600 HELP Please!

Hi all I need some help from some honest experienced techs. I have a
Yamaha fZR 600 '94

It has gone through high volumes of engine oil since the day i got it
which was last year sometime. A few times I while in the middle of a
great ride I saw my engine oil light come on and was deeply stressed
when I found out I was pretty much out of oil. So I started watching
it dilligently and adding oil when necessary. Then I took it into a
shop and asked them to do a compression test because of the oil loss.
When i returned two days later to pick it up they handed me a bill for
70$ and said the bike wasnt burning oil and that they had done an oil
change. I was so mad i steamed off they didnt even do what i asked
them too. Then I hurt myself and was unable to ride for two months.

In the fall when I went to ride it again it wouldnt start, i fiddled
with it and my haynes manual trying to figure out what was up.
Eventually i gave up and took it to a place recommended by some
friends.

I asked them to do a compression test and when they had told me i was
running 100,125,75,150 i authorized a rebuild quoted at 1500$ and told
them to have it back to me by sping. It took until june basically to
get it back and 2000$ dollars later. I took it for a couple of days
and noticed alot of smoke coming out the exhaust. I took it back and
they fixed it free of charge apparently the one piston didnt seal
properly. All in all they replaced the pistons with oversize, set
valve clearance, blalanced carbs. New pistons rings, pin c-clip base
gasket oring valve seal, bored the cylinder new sparks and some cam
work.

The bike runs great, no smoke and feels prety good all in all, but
after 300 km I have drained about half a quart maybe a bit more of oil
as my oil light came on again.

My question is, can anybody explain the oil loss? Should a complete
rebuild not solve this problem? I couldnt bare to spend any more money
on the thing and dont want to sell a bike knowing the oil consumption
problem at hand. I tend to rev it high but a bike thats speedo
redlines at 13 should easily be able to handle 7-9.

Please if anyone can help I would greatly appreciate it I just want my
bike to run like it should,
Ive tried a few different weights of oil and always the same. Not
looking to go synthetic.

Thnks in advance

 

Wow! A quart in less than 400 miles.That's a lot of oil being burned.
The exhaust should be blue white smoke if that much oil is being
burned. Does the exhaust smoke like crazy?

I hate Yamaha's stupid oil level light. I'm worried that the damned
thing won't light when my oil level is down a full quart. It usually
lights at half a quart low.

My FZR-1000, with 20 valves instead of 16, burns what I think is a lot
of oil, about 1/2 a quart every 1000 miles, and I started carrying a
squeeze bottle of oil with me on long sport rides because it's a lot
easier to squirt oil into that tiny filler hole than it is to make a
home made funnel in a parking lot outside an auto parts store and
trickle oil into it.

Once I was 3/4 of a quart low and the oil level light didn't come on.

You said they changed the valve guide oil seals. The FZR 600 has three
different piston rings. The top and second rings are not supposed to be
mixed up. And there is an oil control ring on the piston, too.

Maybe they installed the rings incorrectly or left the oil control ring
expander out?

Is the overhaul job still under warranty. I would take it back to the
shop and make them fix it right and if they can't stop the oil
consumption, take them to small claims court and get your money back.

 

Wow! A quart in less than 400 miles.That's a lot of oil being burned.
The exhaust should be blue white smoke if that much oil is being
burned. Does the exhaust smoke like crazy?





Basically when i first got it back it was smoking like crazy, and i
drained the thing in about 300km, so i took it back, they said the one
piston didnt seal properly, when they gave it back again theres no
smoke, now I didnt really check the oil level when they gave it back
the second time, but after 300km the oil light came on, and yes its
about a half quart low when the light comes on for my bike as well, so
I topped it up and well see after some more km i guess, I'm really
paranoid though as I've been dealing with this prob for quite awhile
now, i feel i just cant find good help these days

 

The engine was knackered.

The dealer who did the work botched the job (one piston not sealing
properly, my arse).

So it's still knackered.

As FB says, legal action is probably the only solution. You've already
spent more on the biker thjn it's worth.

 

My Haynes manual says that other possibilities might be a broken head
gasket between the oil return holes and the cylinder causing oil to be
sucked into the engine,
and also a clogged oil breather or clogged breather hoses might be
causing abnormal crankcase pressurization.

I suppose you could check to see whether your oil breather hoses are
clogged by just removing the oil filler cap and running the engine and
feeling for a lot of air pressure coming out of the hole.

 

Broken head gaskets are usually easily detectable by mayonnaise in the
oil from water leaking into it. Clogged breather hoses.... yeah,
possible, but unlikely.

I've had a couple of bikes in the past that consumed a lot of oil
without actually smoking noticeably - they simply threw a lot of oil
mist out of the rocker breather because the top end was knackered.

My feeling is still that the engine was semi-wrecked to begin with and
that a hamfisted mechanic has (if anything) made matters worse. The OP
is right about it being hard to find decent mechanics.

The last new bike I bought, a few years ago, I took in for its first
free 600-mile service and I quietly marked the oil filter to see if it
had indeed been changed. When I sent another bike in for a valve
re-shim (my Trophy 1200, actually - I'd done it once myself and
couldn't be arsed to do it again) - I put a tiny little blob of epoxy
glue on the cam cover joint with the head.

In both cases, when I got the bike back, I checked. Yup, new oil filter
canister. Yup, little glue blob broken. They'd done the work.

On ukrm, a while back, there was a poster who dropped his (oldish)
GSXR750 in for a service and was charged for a valve re-shim: labour,
shims, etc. Only his model of Gixxer didn't actually have shim
adjustment of the valves.... The shop had just ripped him off.

You shouldn't have to indulge in this sort of clandestine behaviour,
but rip-off bike mechanics make it a good idea.