lurch676
Junior Member
Hey y'all, my names Lurch and I've decided to join up, I'll be honest, mainly because I'm gonna need some help with a 2003 FZ6 my partner and I just bought.
I went and picked her up the day before yesterday. She's a lovely looking bike, but I think the seller did us over. I wasn't able to get to see the bike till it was nearly dark (public transport and over 150 miles away). I checked her over as much as I could there (fork seals, headstock bearings, swingarm bearings, wheel bearings, chain - seemed a little loose[perhaps I should have taken note of this], all electrics work fine and the engine ran sweet and steady idling at 1260 with no knocks or bangs when running, and returning smoothly and quickly when revved up).
Paid £1800.00 for her (they wanted £2200 - another sign I should've picked up on) with 1 months MOT and 5 months tax. The seller is someone I have mutual friends with on the rally scene but it was a fleabay purchase.
Riding her back she seemed smooth throughout the rev range (apart from clunking into 1st gear but I'm used to that from most of my bikes lol, even down to the Goldwing!), and had no shortage of power; had some asian idiot in a Mercedes sport car trying to rile me into racing him up the M1 and she powered through to well over the tonne - WELL over the tonne really quickly).
I did notice a slight knocking when putting her under load but it disappeared when cruising around 90mph so I put it down to the slack chain. More fool me.
The knock appears when pulling away or accelerating away, and isn't consistent with engine revs, but with wheel speed.
Well, I work as a motorcycle mechanic, so I thought that anything that needed doing could be done by me anyway, so whatever happens, it was a good deal. Took her into work today and noticed the fork seals were leaking (not really an issue, just annoyed they pulled the wool over my eyes), and checked the sprocket carrier. Wobbly doesn't describe it.
So out came the back wheel. Thought I'd check the cush drive rubbers and the sprocket carrier bearing and hey presto, sprocket carrier bearing is almost solid. "Fantastic" I think, grab the code off the bearing and pop down our local bearing dealer. £20 later I've got new sprocket carrier/wheel bearings and I'm walking back to get back to work.
Put the new sprocket carrier bearing in with the press and grease up the needle roller bearings. Both the wheel bearings are absolutely fine so I just cleaned everything up and put it all back together. (Who's idea was it to put those fiddly feckin spacers in there?!)
So! Everything back together and I notice the chain has tight spots. I tension the chain to the tightest point on it, and do the wheel alignment, thinking that the new bearing would cure the clunking. Gear up, start the bike, roll her down the ramp outta the workshop, pull up the road literally 25 feet, turn around, back into the workshop, gear off. The clunkings worse; Louder and I can really feel it through the pegs. So, that didn't work.
I pull the front sprocket cover off and put the bike in gear (on centre stand, ignition off) rock the wheel back and forth looking for play in the output shaft, there's nothing, so it's not the bearings there, nor main bearings. I'm scratching my head looking at the sprocket when it dawns on me. I know what it is!
I rolled the bike back down the ramp and got a workmate to come with me whilst the cover was off. Pulled away up the hill at walking speed and my mate confirmed that the chain was trying to lift a link every now and then on the front sprocket, then dropping back down causing the clunk. Huzzah, our cheap bike's just cost another £100 for new chain and sprockets (X-Ring gold chain and standard sprockets - I don't want to do more wheelying like earlier today) and ordered new filters and fork seals at the same time (they joys of working at a garage is I get tax free parts
So it may sound like I've cured it, but I want to know if anyone can think of something I may have missed, or something else it could be. I've ruled out it being in the engine/gearbox because it doesn't correlate with the engine speed, so I basically put it down to sprocket and chain, or brakes (not much else it could be I think) and can't find anything wrong with the brakes.
The new parts come on Tuesday, so I've slackened the chain off again and she still clunks a little, but she's rideable, just a little noisy.
I'd not ridden many Yamaha's before (dragraced a TZR125, and rode a 535 for about a year - of which i have a grand total of 3 pictures lol) so I was really impressed with the speed, acceleration, smoothness and otherwise general "good-ness" of the Fazer.
Are there any points I should be aware of, or should pay special attention to with the 2003 model (which is a pain to find parts for because everyone thinks 2003 is an FZS 600) or any recalls etc?
Look forward to having a good time in this community and getting know y'all, and hopefully hearing from some of ya about my problem.
I'll get some pics up soon.
Lurch.
I went and picked her up the day before yesterday. She's a lovely looking bike, but I think the seller did us over. I wasn't able to get to see the bike till it was nearly dark (public transport and over 150 miles away). I checked her over as much as I could there (fork seals, headstock bearings, swingarm bearings, wheel bearings, chain - seemed a little loose[perhaps I should have taken note of this], all electrics work fine and the engine ran sweet and steady idling at 1260 with no knocks or bangs when running, and returning smoothly and quickly when revved up).
Paid £1800.00 for her (they wanted £2200 - another sign I should've picked up on) with 1 months MOT and 5 months tax. The seller is someone I have mutual friends with on the rally scene but it was a fleabay purchase.
Riding her back she seemed smooth throughout the rev range (apart from clunking into 1st gear but I'm used to that from most of my bikes lol, even down to the Goldwing!), and had no shortage of power; had some asian idiot in a Mercedes sport car trying to rile me into racing him up the M1 and she powered through to well over the tonne - WELL over the tonne really quickly).
I did notice a slight knocking when putting her under load but it disappeared when cruising around 90mph so I put it down to the slack chain. More fool me.
The knock appears when pulling away or accelerating away, and isn't consistent with engine revs, but with wheel speed.
Well, I work as a motorcycle mechanic, so I thought that anything that needed doing could be done by me anyway, so whatever happens, it was a good deal. Took her into work today and noticed the fork seals were leaking (not really an issue, just annoyed they pulled the wool over my eyes), and checked the sprocket carrier. Wobbly doesn't describe it.
So out came the back wheel. Thought I'd check the cush drive rubbers and the sprocket carrier bearing and hey presto, sprocket carrier bearing is almost solid. "Fantastic" I think, grab the code off the bearing and pop down our local bearing dealer. £20 later I've got new sprocket carrier/wheel bearings and I'm walking back to get back to work.
Put the new sprocket carrier bearing in with the press and grease up the needle roller bearings. Both the wheel bearings are absolutely fine so I just cleaned everything up and put it all back together. (Who's idea was it to put those fiddly feckin spacers in there?!)
So! Everything back together and I notice the chain has tight spots. I tension the chain to the tightest point on it, and do the wheel alignment, thinking that the new bearing would cure the clunking. Gear up, start the bike, roll her down the ramp outta the workshop, pull up the road literally 25 feet, turn around, back into the workshop, gear off. The clunkings worse; Louder and I can really feel it through the pegs. So, that didn't work.
I pull the front sprocket cover off and put the bike in gear (on centre stand, ignition off) rock the wheel back and forth looking for play in the output shaft, there's nothing, so it's not the bearings there, nor main bearings. I'm scratching my head looking at the sprocket when it dawns on me. I know what it is!
I rolled the bike back down the ramp and got a workmate to come with me whilst the cover was off. Pulled away up the hill at walking speed and my mate confirmed that the chain was trying to lift a link every now and then on the front sprocket, then dropping back down causing the clunk. Huzzah, our cheap bike's just cost another £100 for new chain and sprockets (X-Ring gold chain and standard sprockets - I don't want to do more wheelying like earlier today) and ordered new filters and fork seals at the same time (they joys of working at a garage is I get tax free parts
So it may sound like I've cured it, but I want to know if anyone can think of something I may have missed, or something else it could be. I've ruled out it being in the engine/gearbox because it doesn't correlate with the engine speed, so I basically put it down to sprocket and chain, or brakes (not much else it could be I think) and can't find anything wrong with the brakes.
The new parts come on Tuesday, so I've slackened the chain off again and she still clunks a little, but she's rideable, just a little noisy.
I'd not ridden many Yamaha's before (dragraced a TZR125, and rode a 535 for about a year - of which i have a grand total of 3 pictures lol) so I was really impressed with the speed, acceleration, smoothness and otherwise general "good-ness" of the Fazer.
Are there any points I should be aware of, or should pay special attention to with the 2003 model (which is a pain to find parts for because everyone thinks 2003 is an FZS 600) or any recalls etc?
Look forward to having a good time in this community and getting know y'all, and hopefully hearing from some of ya about my problem.
I'll get some pics up soon.
Lurch.
