Strange noise coming from engine ! FJ-09 Cam Chain

[sixcharlie]

Hi everybody, I'm the guy who broke the shift shaft recall. Technical Bulletin has been released addressing cct noise.
 
US bikes affected:
RN37E 0000002-0003031
RN37Y 0000009-0000831
RN37E 0003032-0003116
RN37Y 0000832-0000865
 
I will make a new thread and post the Service Bulletin when I get home later today.

[thruster8999]

Mines on the list but I dont have much noise just yet. When it does get bad I think I will go with APE.
Let us know if you get this done if it makes a difference.

[adjuster]

Sixcharlie, you are the man!
 
You have no idea what Yamaha put me through to get them to warranty my failed first 2014 FZ09.
 
They told me a I was a liar, fool and idiot for working on my own bike. (Yes, sure, I've been working on vehicles since I was 5 years old, certified all position welder, SME for a large Insurance Company on Mecanical/Steering/Suspension and Unibody.. but I don't know my way around a simple cam chain tensioner.... And I've worked many years as a mechanic on heavy/farm equipment, as well as built insane power turbo engines for Supra's where they have so much power, they bend crankshafts, suspension links and other failures of parts never designed for that level of power. (Stock is 320hp, with mods, they are putting 650 or more at the wheels to the pavement... Or more depending on the build.)
 
But hey, I'm a mechanical idiot. LOL
 
And I do thermal and lubrication coatings for a hobby. Thus the turbo engines.
 
So, back to the CCT. I really love this CP3 engine. It's stellar, but the stock CCT design has been flawed from the very start, and the various revisions are just putting band-aids on the problem.
 
The only reliable solution would be a manual CCT. Set it, and forget it. Yamaha, Honda, Kawasaki and any engine with a timing chain in racing uses a manual adjuster. Or they risk losing the chain/timing upon throttle closing at high RPM.
 
APE and Graves make manual CCT's for the CP3 engine. They are simple. They are lighter. They don't fail. Period.
 
And if you take the time to pull the cover, you can make sure your manual CCT is not too tight or loose. You can tune them by ear if you know what to listen to. Helps to have a engine stethoscope but a short broom handle works too. (Put the broom handle end on the cam chain tensioner/housing, and then hold the other end to your ear while the bike is running, you can hear EVERYTHING.)
 
Adjust accordingly, but once it's set "tight" you don't want to add more than a 1/4 turn or so at any one time, and that generally will go 10,000 miles or more. More with good oil since it's all about the chain slipping over the nylon slider material. Follow the APE instructions, and you will be fine.
 
I lost my cell phone with the photos of the failed CCT and tensioner on the slack side of the engine. It was an epic failure, the case was full of nylon shavings, all curled up and messy with oil, while there was a considerable amount of wear into the aluminum backing support, it was worn by the chain links, smeared by the heat created, as the alloy clearly reached a temp that melted it, and turned the chain blue from overheating.
 
This was my fault of course, because I'm a lying idiot who wanted to work on my own bike according to Yamaha..... And the Yamaha expert who was making this warranty decision?
 
He had zero mechanical background, training or experience. Finally admitted to me he was a college grad, but would not tell me what degree. LOL Would not, and could not tell me what motorcycle he owned? Had repaired? Car repairs? Ever pump gas there my friend? LOL
This guy had to get off the phone, put me on hold, and "consult" a "technical" guy to answer my questions multiple times. (All recorded of course, hey I'm a claims adjuster by trade, so I record everything that would be important in court.)
 
So, now that they have finally put a technical bulletin that reveals they made changes to the engine/case/machine work to add more oil flow to the FAILED DESIGN and have had to re-design the CCT to try and overcome the failure prone design of this "Rube Goldberg" ratchet and clank monster of a botched design....
 
Holy heck Yamaha, how much more complex and failure prone could you make this design? It's cheap, it has small moving parts held by cheap bent metal flat springs that by just bending the metal, work hardens it to failure... Duh. Anyone, take a flat metal spring steel strip, bend it 90 degrees, and you just work hardened the metal to near failure. Put that part in a complex, harmonic vibration situation, and have it move around at all RPM ranges, holding parts together under pressure that varies depending on RPM, temp and other factors.. And it's no surprise that it can break and fails.
 
Add in the lack of adequate lubrication, and you get the wear their own TSB outlines in the bore/core of the CCT. The "teeth" that the ratchet, and spring steel parts are supposed to lock into, and self adjust?
 
They swiftly wear out. And the CCT just flops around then. In and out of proper adjustment. And in the case of my engine? What appeared to me that the ratchet system caught on the less worn out parts lower in the bore, and then proceeded to "ratchet" out more and more into the tensioner, pushing it into the chain to the point where it caused so much wear and heat, that the entire chain locked up and my rear wheel became the point with the least amount of friction... Had I had more traction, something else would have failed next? The chain? The cam sprockets? Drive Sprocket? I'm sure it was no fun on the clutch and transmission either, but I'd expect them to handle this type of power/energy by design, or the bike would fail just riding it in normal use, there are all sorts of forces from normal use on the tire/chain/transmission/clutch/crank etc... But the timing set? It's designed to accurately rotate the cams. That's it. On some bikes, run the oil pump or water pump, but on this CP3 engine, the oil pump has it's own small chain drive. It's NOT designed to transfer the entire engine power to the rear wheel, or take that sort of power/force on an extended basis period.
 
That is another reason I ditched the FZ09, that engine is toast in my opinion. Yamaha would need to fully rebuild it to get it right again. (And I did think about that, and doing some coatings for fun, but in the end, I just wanted to walk away from the FZ09, and that failed engine, and the FJ09 is a better bike in all aspects.)
 
Now that Yamaha has issued this TSB, I almost want to call Yamaha customer service and see if they will cover the more than $ 2,000.00 that I lost in value on the FZ09. Might be just worth telling them I'm not a liar, idiot and it appears that I was correct, and they owe me an apology.
 
Nah, it's more fun to just go ride.
 

[tracermonkey]

I've had 5 cct's in a year. Still shit. Number 6 on its way

[thruster8999]

So should I be nervous? As of right now I dont have the CCT problem but that doesnt mean it will pop up at the most inconvenient time. I am going on a long trip and dont want to be stuck out in the middle of know where.
So do I take the bike in and complain that it needs fix even though there is no noise?
Or just ride it for another 3000 miles and then have the APE put in?
I would do the APE now if someone around here has done it before and could guide me through the process. I can pretty much do everything but I dont feel comfortable on this one.

[wessie]

So should I be nervous? As of right now I dont have the CCT problem but that doesnt mean it will pop up at the most inconvenient time. I am going on a long trip and dont want to be stuck out in the middle of know where. So do I take the bike in and complain that it needs fix even though there is no noise?
Or just ride it for another 3000 miles and then have the APE put in?
I would do the APE now if someone around here has done it before and could guide me through the process. I can pretty much do everything but I dont feel comfortable on this one.

Ride it. Is your bike in the serial range? If not, you have a later version of the CCT anyway (assuming you are on a FJ from USA)
 
I'm going on holiday to France in a week. No noise from my CCT so I'm not worried.
 
If it breaks, it breaks. I'm more likely to get a puncture to inconvenience me. I have a puncture repair kit and a breakdown/recovery policy that gives me a hire vehicle if my bike can't be fixed. 

[thruster8999]

Yes its on the list. I think I am just going to ride it and deal with it at a later time.

[captainscarlet]

For those in Europe you can enter your VIN on this page and find out if your bike is affected by a recall.
 
http://www.yamaha-motor.eu/uk/services/modification-checker/index.aspx
 
I've used the UK site as an example; just choose your country as appropriate.
 
Another useful site to check is the EU Rapid Alert System for non-food dangerous products.  I found the recall for the Yamaha soft panniers there.
 
http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/consumers_safety/safety_products/rapex/alerts/main/?event=main.notification&search_term=A12/1140/15&exclude_search_term=0&search_year=2015
 
Of course peeps in the UK can use DVSA
 
http://www.dft.gov.uk/vosa/apps/recalls/default.asp?tx
 
CS
 
 
 

[xlxr]

The stock Yamaha CCT is junk, and if you continue to use it the point of causing engine failure, it is your fault.
 
Mine went bad 300 miles from when bike was purchased new. I am now a happy APE owner.

[captainscarlet]

The stock Yamaha CCT is junk, and if you continue to use it the point of causing engine failure, it is your fault.  
Mine went bad 300 miles from when bike was purchased new. I am now a happy APE owner.

That's all well and good but here in Sweden at least all Yamaha bikes come with a 5 year warranty.  So junking the factory cct for a third party equivalent will also junk the warranty.  No thanks. 
CS

[adjuster]

All the more reason Yamaha should just replace the flawed design with a manual CCT.
 
If it is out of tension in 10,000 miles I'd be amazed.
 
Think of this common fact: The valve clearance on this engine design is a flat tappet with shims to set the clearance to the right spec. As parts wear, you would measure and change out any shims to bring the valve clearance into proper spec.
 
This is not something you do often. It's about as needed on most bikes as "adjusting" a manual CCT.
 
And the CCT is much less work to adjust than checking valves by a factor of about a million. One you have to pull the valve cover, timing covers, and crank the engine over and back to check clearance with a feeler gauge.
 
ON the CCT? You just warm up the bike if it's making any chain noise, loosen the lock nut on the manual CCT shaft, turn the shaft while listening to the tensioner till it's silent, back off tension slightly and lock the nut again. Done and done.
 
Repeat in another 10,000 or more miles. (Only if you hear noise really.)
 
On the spring or hydraulic CCT's they often have too much pressure holding the tension too tight, causing wear that's not needed, or in the case of our CCT, it's a toss up over too loose, or too tight, one is noise the other is engine failure.
And the hydraulic ones? They push too much at high RPM, so for most street bikes, are no big deal, unless you use crappy oil, and gum up the oil drain passage, then you can get too much pressure and tensioner wear, and engine failure again.
 
And since we all know race engines are perhaps the most stressed out versions of any "consumer" type product such as our FJ09 engine, why do all the teams right up front replace the "automatic" CCT's with a manual CCT?
 
Because they don't fail at idle, or peak RPM. A slightly loose chain is a happy chain right? Same holds true for timing chains, but too loose can cause a jump in time, and that's bad news for the engine at any speed. But too tight? It's going to cause wear up to the point where the nylon slider is worn, then the wear stops or slows to nearly nothing. The parts are going to slide on the oil like they are designed to do, and wear will be minimal, taking 10's of thousands of miles to get it loose enough to make noise again.
 
Meanwhile, the stock CCT is flopping from too tight to too loose and back again. Noise and Wear, Noise and Wear... Or cheap bent spring failure, locked ratchet out every chance and rapid wear, then major engine failure.
 
Seems like Yamaha would just step up and solve this cheap and for good.
 
But that's not what they will do is it?
 
I'm about as likely to get my lost money back from Yahama, even while I've bought two CP3 based bikes from them to this point. I'd think that would make me a good customer for Yamaha, and my bike before that was a 2006 FZ1....
 
 

[bobdog]

Drat. My bike's in the range. Only heard it once, on a long downhill at neutral throttle at about 3500 rpm. Due for an oil change - will see if the dealer's willing to play...

[wess88]

I didn't see any recall on the Canadian side...
I wonder if us Canadians are going to get screwed again on this one
(there was a fuel pump recall on TMax which again we didn't have here but everywhere else in the world had the recall.... almost enough to make me never buy another Yamaha again.... almost)
 

[wild]

Mine used to make all kinds of clattering. Especially noticeable when next to jersey barriers.
 
Since my ecu flash the bike is very quiet.
 
I'm thinking it was the AIS system which is now disabled.
 

[DavidS]

Mine recently started doing this as well, and I'm at 800kms. First service is at 1000kms, so I wonder if this is partially brought on by the oil being dirty, filled with metal shavings, and just being ready to be changed. I figured it was nuisance more than issue, so my plan was to see how it is after the first service and if clean oil takes the sound away.

I would ask the dealer to look at this as part of your initial 1000km service, and if it is a problem, have them do the replacement.