ST1100 - She's Giving Up Smoking Like A Cigar But Now She's Hot!

bdalameda said:
Yep that's the stuff. The Archoil won't hurt wet clutches either. The Archoil 9100 also works miracles with Ford Diesels that suffer from stiction with the hydraulic operated fuel injectors.
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BTW, with Archoil, is that something that takes quite a while to work or does it work pretty quickly?
 
Dang Phil. Works great for 4K plus miles then this. Maybe it was just ready to go. I had car that did that. Pontiac Iron duke engine was gone after 50K miles. Which was 3 months after I bought it. Bitched at GM and they finally paid for one third of the repair cost. Hope you get it sorted out.
 
Assuming stuck rings..... if you check the MSDS on Archoil Diesel Fuel System cleaner..... very similar to Berryman's B12..... contains harsh chemicals like Xylene and benzine mixed with half naptha (as most are) and a healthy dose 30-50% PEA. PEA is the active ingredient in Techron and is about the only thing that really removes carbon. Probably best let it soak a while and do multiple treatments. I'd overdose it, double or triple the recommended dosage.

In the old days, we would spray water in the car carbs on fast idle and watch the steam come out the back.. Water and carbon don't mix and the steam flakes it off..... maybe good to get carbon off the head and piston tops, maybe the valves. Not thinking it would work on rings, but maybe.

A braver method would be to shoot some small doses directly in the carb/fuel injection throttle body sync ports one at a time while the engine runs at a fast idle.

Nothing gonna fix a leaky valve stem seal except replacing it....
 
It seems unlikely that anything related to the oil would fail while parked up for four weeks. As an alternative what about the fuel system? I'm thinking that you could have a stuck float that is letting the fuel level go too high in that cylinder. I also wondered about the fuel vacuum tap; does that connect to the right rear cylinder? If so, a perforated diaphram could be allowing raw fuel to be pulled in from the fuel tap into the cylinder.
 
It doesn't smell like fuel or coolant - it smells and looks like oil to me.
Coolant is usually white smoke with sort of 'sweet' smell - this is light gray with more of a burnt oil smell to me.
If the Archoil and Redline fuel treatment brings no 'relief' and there no other ideas, I will swap out the engine and put it aside for further analysis at a later date.
I want to get this bike back on the road as I have a lot of riding left to do this year and like to spread it among the four 'runners'.
I'd rather swap engines and get it running than pull the heads and then end up still having to swap engines.
'Analysis' will be a lot easier with the engine out of the bike than in the bike anyway.
 
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Heres another thought - where does the engine crankcase vent into? Likely into a part of the intake system somewhere so the gases can be ingested by the motor. Might be something haywire in there somewhere. Maybe it’s pushing oil out of there for some reason. On most cars there’s a baffle inside the valve cover that stops the oil from hitting that vent (one bank of the v8 it’s a pvc valve, on the other bank it’s a vent hose that hooks onto your air filter housing). I’m wondering if that baffle is gone or malfunctioning somehow, or there‘s a baffle or valve gone haywire.
So have a close look at how that’s routed and see if there’s a chance it could be sucking oil thro there somehow.
 
Light gray would be fuel usually. Consider very poor (inconsistent) combustion in that cylinder; the result would be low cyl temps unable to burn out any oil residue (which is always present) in a timely fashion. If it doesn't smell super fuel-ly then you don't likely have a stuck float, etc.

Sources of oil (besides poor ring seal): valve guides (cracked or poor-sealing) are most likely.

I can send you my borescope. Just DM me your address and I'll mail it right out (free of charge; return is on you. :) )

It is USB and pretty much any laptop can use it. No drivers needed that I'm aware of. It's just a dummy camera anyway.

Typically, when valve guides get worn (or crack; this is unlikely) they will leak down overnight. I'd let it sit overnight and pull the sparkplug and view the cylinder in the morning. Super oily (as compared to a "good" cylinder) -=> Valve guides or very poor ring seal.

You could also figure out which cylinder is the companion for the coil and swap the leads. See if it follows.

I wouldn't be playing games with trying to unstick rings or deal with varnish or whatnot. I'm a "go back to the basics" kind of person.
Usually the simplest explanation is the correct one.

If it has good compression the compression ring(s) are good but that says nothing about the oil rings. However, bad oil rings at < 100K? Not very likely.

I'd be looking at valve guides. Honda valve guides are good but they aren't perfect. They also don't just dry out unless the entire top-end was dry, which is extremely unlikely (to the point that rust on cam lobes, etc. would be a concern).

A borescope is a wonderful tool to assist in diagnostics.
Based on what I've read so far, gray smoke is usually fuel and incomplete combustion can mimic oil burning without the fuel smell.
Incomplete combustion is always compression, timing, fuel ratio, or spark, and it's almost certainly not the first two. That leaves fuel ratio or spark.



Addendum: I had a bike this summer that I brought back to life ('83 V65 Magna) and the symptoms were nearly identical. The problem was crap spark to one cylinder and a fuel problem (airbox leak). Once I fixed the spark issue and got it up to temp, suddenly the last cylinder caught and burned out a bunch of crap. It was kinda-sorta running and smoky.
 
Uncle Phil said:
It doesn't smell like fuel or coolant - it smells and looks like oil to me.
Coolant is usually white smoke with sort of 'sweet' smell - this is light gray with more of a burnt oil smell to me.
If the Archoil and Redline fuel treatment brings no 'relief' and there no other ideas, I will swap out the engine and put it aside for further analysis at a later date.
I want to get this bike back on the road as I have a lot of riding left to do this year and like to spread it among the four 'runners'.
I'd rather swap engines and get it running than pull the heads and then end up still having to swap engines.
'Analysis' will be a lot easier with the engine out of the bike than in the bike anyway.
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Fingers crossed the swap goes smoothly. See you in Renfrew.
 
Just a story...... a friend bought a Honda 650 Nighthawk, which had sat for a year and had no battery. It seemed to be missing on one cylinder and he got it to my place. Sure enough, compression down on #3, coils, spark plugs, fuel everything else checked out. We just ran the thing, nothing special, it just needed to wake up from it's sleep. I assume the rings were stuck but they loosened up with some use and suddenly ran very well...... maybe dump in some fuel injector/carbon cleaner and just go for a ride and get it up to temperature, etc. It's at least worth a shot and might be a cheap fix.
 
That's the plan before I do another 'engineectomy'. I also plan on draining the gas tank and putting in new fuel.
Just strange and unexpected behavior to say the least for engine with 45,000 miles on it and only sat for 4 weeks.
The other two sat in the same conditions and had no issues.
 
Uncle Phil said:
That's the plan before I do another 'engineectomy'. I also plan on draining the gas tank and putting in new fuel.
Just strange and unexpected behavior to say the least for engine with 45,000 miles on it and only sat for 4 weeks.
The other two sat in the same conditions and had no issues.
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Well, here's to a easy and quick resolution. It was rare on this forum but some ST1300's sitting a period such as this would stick a valve and be extremely hard to start but after a few minutes the valve would work loose. I'm not saying it's a valve but hoping it is a simple thing like a stuck oil ring.
 
What color is the smoke?

Uncle Phil said:
Unfortunately, SweetTreat - the one I just replaced the engine in - is now smoking like a cigar on fire and missing on at least one cylinder.
It appears that the right rear cylinder is sucking oil as the plug is wet after cleaning and reinstalling.
The oil level is correct (not overfilled - I checked the air cleaner to be sure there was no oil in there).
Never overheated, good oil (Mobil 1 Motorcycle), proper coolant levels, 45,000 miles (5,000 miles since I did the swap) and looks like this engine is toast. :(
This one is a real puzzler ... :think1:
Any ideas?
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Hope the additives work as this is puzzling. Most of us in the north put the bikes away for more than 5 months, and I don’t think I’ve seen this condition on either of the ST forums. Especially if you ran it for 4,000 miles without any trouble.
 
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You should pull the valve covers off and check the cam and chain. If you have an intake valve timing issue that cylinder is pulling too much vacuum drawing up oil even with good oil rings installed. This can be determined doing a compression test too. Maybe? another is, If you have a plug not firing. dumping raw fuel burning off in exhaust.
 
OhioDeere said:
You should pull the valve covers off and check the cam and chain. If you have an intake valve timing issue that cylinder is pulling too much vacuum drawing up oil even with good oil rings installed. This can be determined doing a compression test too. Maybe? another is, If you have a plug not firing. dumping raw fuel burning off in exhaust.
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ST1100 is 'gear' driven by a belt. Valves on the 'suspect' side appear to be working fine as I ran it with the cover off (quite the oil bath!).
 
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