Finshed my 24K maintainance. (long)

[B_Cebrian]

I have completed the 24K maintenance on my bike so thought I’d write it down for other DIY’s to have a look and see that it isn’t all that terribly hard. I’ll come clean and tell you that I put it off until 25k due to some logistic and scheduling problems. First I’m currently living in my 24ft travel trailer in San Diego, due to my military obligations, and my bike is kept under the awning and in its cover so she is mostly comfortable. The problem with this is I don’t have my garage in Virginia to do the work. A coworker offered to let me use his, I warned him about the extensive disassembly needed to accomplish my goal. He seemed unconcerned, well get back to that later. I had already changed the oil so I only needed to drain the coolant, valves, new belts, clean air filters, and check all the critical fastener torques. I obtained most of my parts from Desmotimes with the exception of my crank turner and shim kit. I purchased form Chris at CA Cycleworks. His shop is only a few miles from my office and is on my way home. Consumables I had, grease, sealant ect.

I had moved the bike to my friend’s garage on the Friday night prior to starting the work due to having to move my trailer to a new camp park and I had my commuter bike in the back of the truck. I had the move done by about 10:00 Saturday morning. I was at my friends and started on my bike by 1:00pm. Since this is the second full service I’ve done on this bike I’ve learned a couple of things that don’t have to be taken off to get to the valves so things went faster. Removal of all the obstructions took about 2-3 hours. Fairings, left, right, nose, including the mirrors, rear cowl, tank/seat, drain coolant and radiator off, carbon canister, horn, air runners and filters (to be cleaned), pull the coils and off come the valve covers, belt covers, crank end cover. I had to loosen the air box a bit to get off the horizontal valve cover . What could stay was the exhaust canister shield, and the oil cooler didn’t have to move. At this point my friend walked out to the garage to see most of my motorcycle scattered about, eyes wide he stated “I guess you weren’t kidding. Is that all going to go back together?” I informed him that was the general plan.

Now I was ready to get into the nitty gritty. I pulled the spark plugs, installed the crank turner, (by the way I though wasn’t a bit deal till I used it, worth the money to have one.) aligned the driving cam wheel mark to the mark on the casing. This puts the horizontal cylinder at TDC. I’ve already marked my cam pulleys as described in the Desmotimes manual with some red paint to align with the head tops so I didn’t have to do it again to make sure that I had them timed correctly when I put reinstalled the belts. I pulled the belt for the horizontal cylinder and measured the valves. All were good except for the left side exhaust the opener had dropped below the recommended spec, and the exhaust had opened to the wide end of the spec so into my shim kit I dove. I popped the cams out, (Note both the left and right cam hold down journals are the same part number and are exactly the same. Make sure you don’t get them mixed up and they are re-installed in their original position. Not really the same problem with the cams. The intake cam is marked with a splash of paint between the lobes, the exhaust isn’t, I still kept them ordered so I wouldn’t mix them up.) I’ve heard a couple of claims of bad rockers, so being a little paranoid, even thought it’s a testa, I inspected my rockers. Not a spot of wear after 25K miles.

Had a little problem with converting the standard measure of my micrometer to metric so my first choice of shim on each side was a one size to large, slipped back one shim and everything was back in the mid spec. One thing I found. The closer shim I removed had been sanded unevenly by someone in the past so depending on where I measured it the reading changed. That might have given me some of the difficulty in getting the new shim thickness right. The hardest part was getting the keepers back in for the closer shim. After I had the cams back in I turned the engine to put the vertical cylinder to TDC and spun the horizontal cams by hand a few time and checked again to make sure my readings were good. You can tell your Horizontal cylinder is at TDC by two ways before you remove the belt. One put a long thing screw driver into the spark plug hole and feel it or if you look at the cams you’ll see three notches in the cam end that make a kind of “T”. When the tail of the T is pointing straight up relative to the top of the head you’re at TDC. This can be a lifesaver is you forget to mark you cams before taking off the belts.

My vertical cylinder valves were still in spec. So I put the valve covers back on with a light coat of silicone sealant. Re-aligned my main timing marks and installed the belts. The vertical belt was a PITA as there are no cam holder tools for the testas and to get all my marks to line up the intake cam has some valves open and you have to fight against the closer keeper spring. Not a lot of fun, it took a while but I got it after a few failures to get all the marks to align. Getting the belt on the driver pulley is very tight you have to be careful to get it on and not damage the belt. Horizontal was a piece of cake. Used new lock nuts for my tensioner pulleys, set my belt tension, with each cylinder at TDC, using my laptop, a guitar tuner program and a remote mic.

To complete the day I installed the plugs, put the radiator back on and filled the cooling system. Cleaned my air filters with a K&N recharge kit and let them dry over night. I re-oiled them in the morning.

The next day was simply put the bike back together and a test ride. I started at 10:00am and was complete with the bike by 1:00pm. I don’t have the electronic test media to do the injection system analysis but intakes are balanced and the bike is running great so I’m not too worried about it. I might let the dealer do the 30K service just to get the full kit done but at this point I’m happy with the bike.

Over all the work is time consuming but not all that difficult. As I get more comfortable with the procedures, it takes me less time to do them. It took me 2 full days to do my 18K and I didn’t take off the belts or have to adjust a valve. I think if I hadn’t had to start late on Saturday I could have accomplished the full service in one day if I’d wanted. I still need more practice with measuring the shims and calculating the new shim thickness but I think I have the gist of it. Except for the purchase of the shim kit and tools, the service cost me about $250. Compare that to my last dealer accomplished 12k service at $1037. It’s worth it to learn to do your own work. Even if you can’t do everything it will significantly reduce the cost of ownership.

[998R_2002]

Excellent journal. Now if only there were pictures...

[Miykl]

Originally Posted by B_Cebrian

set my belt tension, with each cylinder at TDC, using my laptop, a guitar tuner program and a remote mic. .

More info please. 24k just about due.

[level7]

Hell yeah. Do it all over again and this time take pictures

Great write up. I'm nearing my 12k service. I'll let the dealer do that and I'll do the 18k. It looks like fun.

Thanks for sharing.

How the heck did you get a gutiar tuner to pick up the sound? I couldn't register a tone.

[Bugatti]

Thanks for the write up. It's very helpful as I'm planning on doing most of my 6000 service.

Which Guitar Tuner program did you use? I hear it's pretty difficult to pick up the vibration sound.. 140hz as I remember.. what kind of mic? Did you take several readings to be accurate?

[B_Cebrian]

I bought a tuner program I downloaded from this site, http://enableencore.com/encore/guitartuner.htm; they have a 30 day trial you can download for free. It has a setting where you can input the frequency you want in Hz and tune to that so there is no guess work. The cool thing about this tuner is in this mode, each time you strum the belt, the readout will "hold" at the sensed freq. So you aren't trying to visually determine what the actual frequency is as the numbers run up and down. The cost of the tuner to by is $15 from the site. I got a small clip on remote Mic from Radio Shack for $20. I set the tuner for the spec of 110Hz and held the mike about 2cm from the drive wheel on each of the long sections of the belt, that is the bottom left section of each belt where the factory service manual tells you to measure it, snugged up the lock nut enough that I could adjust the tension and strum the belt with one hand and hold the mic with the other. Got both belts within +/- .5 Hz of 110hz. Once I had it set I finished torquing down the lock nuts. I checked again after to make sure that I hadn’t moved the adjustment. I have no way to compare this exact way to any other measuring method, but I think it worked pretty well. I was also in a nice quiet garage in a condo complex so there wasn't allot of extraneous noise around to get in the way.

[Flip998FE]

You da man, thanks for posting that up!

[Chuckracer]

Off to The Hall Of Wisdom!

[Gearbox]

Hi Cebrian - Can see you are currently on line.
Am I right in thinking the belt tension frequency is the same for a 2001 ST4s (996 Engine) ?

[B_Cebrian]

I read somewhere that all superbike engines (except that 748R wide belt) are now 110hz +/-10. I can only vouch for the Testa engines. If you do some more searching here I'll bet someone can and has posted it up.