Bent Valve

[El Gato]

I had the timing belts changed on my BF225 Honda's this week. I received a call from the shop Friday PM that there is a problem with one of the motors. I go to the shop this morning and they tell me that when starting the starboard engine after the belt change it was running rough. They pull the plugs and there is no compression on the right bank. When I arrived they were doing a leakdown test on the right bank. The numbers were high.

I am thinking they screwed up the timing. The tech assured me the timing was right. They pull the head and find one of the valves is bent, and no indication that the valves hit the piston(I couldn't see any). Now they are telling me that excessive carbon build up in the head caused this failure.

My motors have 1300 hours on them. The same shop(authorized) has done all of the scheduled maintenance. The plugs have been pulled every 100 hrs and the plugs have always been whitish and no indications of carbon buildup. The plugs were last pulled about 20 hours ago. I do not use Ringfree or any of the other similar products. The engine appeared to be running normally when used the last time about 3 weeks ago

The shop owner is telling me that the carbon buildup bent the valve an broke the valve guide. They want to replace the valve and do a shock treatment of ringfree. I am having a hard time believing this one. Can anyone enlighten me?

Thanks,
Aubrey

 

[hondon]

Re: Bent Valve

Why were you having the belts changed in the first place?

 

[walexa]

Re: Bent Valve

...

 

[walexa]

Re: Bent Valve

I smell something fishy here.

If they got the belt on correctly I bet they rotated the crank with the belt off and manually bent the valve. If the engine was running fine last time before you took it in I would be upset........

Hondon, do the honda outboards not have belt replacement as part of scheduled maintenance? If not, I would still probably do it with 1300 hours on the ticker as I doubt Honda is going to warrant anything if one breaks. Not being sarcastic or anything.......just stating my feelings on the matter.

Waylan

 

[Ro-Tator]

Re: Bent Valve

I find it very hard to believe that this valve happened to bend itself the moment before they started working on the motor. If the motor was running well before this dose of routine maintenance, I would suspect that they fukced something up with the timing.

I think you are on the right track, gato. You should be skeptical of them if this kind of stuff happened during a routine belt replacement. Like the above post says, they probably rotated the motor through a few cycles by hand while the timing was off and that was when the valve was bent. If so, they're probably trying to have you foot the bill for their foolishness.

The carbon accumulations aren't a likely cause of this problem IMO, especially because you said that the plugs have always been very clean.

Just my .02.

I hope you have good luck in dealing with the people at the shop. I hope you can get them to pay for the damage that they very well could have caused.

~Tator