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Gladius motor- interchangeable?

5K views 32 replies 13 participants last post by  Who? 
#1 ·
Hi friends,

My buddy just did a valve adjustment on his 2012. Ran great in the morning and most of the way back home, and then the motor lost power and siezed up. I suspect something with the rear cam chain, but we haven't been able to confirm yet.

I DID find a Gladius motor with low miles for cheap, but I'm not sure if it's a direct drop in to the Glee. If this motor is lunched, should we buy the Gladius motor and stick it in there?

Thanks in advance!
 
#3 ·
I bet you could get it to work. There are differences, like the cams are bigger and the flywheel rotor has OPEN magnets, not encapsulated.

I'm unsure about the ECU and all the sensors though. I say go for it! :thumbup:
 
#4 ·
Welp... Here's the front piston! There are metal shavings in the airbox. It's bad.

This will be fun to fix.
 

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#5 ·
Yikes...looks like a scene from "Alien"
 
#7 ·
Valve adjustment gone bad? Did it drop a valve? May be able to repair just the piston and head if the con rod isn't junk.

The crank sensors on the rotor have to be the same, and get processed the same.
 
#8 ·
The front exhausts were at .09 and .11, well below tolerance. I can't believe the thing was still running, honestly. We weren't able to get the top end off to thoroughly examine what he may have done wrong yet. The piston is holed, though, so I'd imagine that the crank bearings could be compromised from metal shards? I'm not sure, never dealt with a repair of this magnitude before.
 
#9 ·
Uhmm.... 0.09 to 0.11? Gads. If not a typo (missing a zero right of the decimal) how did he do that?
 
#10 ·
It's not a typo. When he got the valve cover off and checked the clearances, the exhaust valves on the front were .09 mm and .11 mm. He shimmed them to the mid .2 range and buttoned it up (did the intakes too). Motor ran fine on his 60 mile ride to work, much smoother and the bike was reporting better fuel mileage as well, and then it grenaded halfway through his return trip.
 
#11 ·
Ah, mm not inch. My mistake. Like others here, I'm curious exactly what may have caused the engine to pop. Intakes and exhaust set to the same spec (0.2-0.3mm for intake would be bad,) cams out of position, that sort of thing.
 
#12 ·
I'll certainly post more pics as we tear it apart. I am curious as well. I'm about to do the valves on my Vee and this has me spooked, even though I've done it before.
 
#14 ·
The Gladius engine probably can be made to work, but you almost certainly need the ECU and throttle bodies as well as the engine.

More complicated engines swaps between the road and DL variants of these bikes have been done but it's more work than you'd expect.
 
#15 ·
I knew of a guy who swapped a SV1000 motor into his DL1000. I know its a different project, apples to oranges, but worked quite well. He had to use the ECU and TB's from the SV. It was quite an envolved adventure but came out great! Ran like jet stink when he was done. Was pumping out 105HP to the rear wheel once he was done. He did have a full Akro exhaust and modded the air box too. PC and a bit of dyno work too! Im sure this project "could" be done. It may not be worth the effort though. Putting in a donor DL650 motor would be a lot easier!
 
#16 ·
Disturbed a keeper? Is that a dowel pin? I know he said that one of the dowel pins on the front exhaust cam journal was missing, but he may have lost it.
 
#17 ·
The dowel pin is more correctly referred to as a piston pin - the pin that connects the conrod to the piston. Surely not what he meant.
The valve keepers lock the valves into place. Each valve has two half shells (keepers) to do the job. If one of the valve keepers was accidentally dislodged that would certainly explain what lunched the engine.
 
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#22 ·
OH. I think I may have just learned what did it, thanks to your description and diagram. On the exhaust side, he put in a shim wrong. It measured 0 clearance when he turned the motor over a few times and tested it. He then pulled the cam again and reset the shim inside the valve spring retainer and it measured fine. I bet that's what happened. Odd that it ran fine for 100+ miles though...
 
#24 ·
He didn't measure until after he turned the motor over. He and I were both under the impression that you should turn the motor over once or twice before measuring shim-under-bucket valves so you force the bits together- your measurement doesn't get thrown off by the film of oil between shim and bucket.
 
#26 ·
Just connecting the dots between the comment of disturbing the valve keepers and looking at the parts fiche. If the keepers sit right under the shim, and he messed up the shim installation and turned over the motor a few times, it seems like the keepers may have been disturbed?
 
#27 ·
You'd have to exert a lot of force to manually compress the valve spring enough to disturb the keepers, especially without using the specially-designed tools for just such work. Did he check the tolerances again after re-setting the shim (and presumably turning the engine over again)? If the shim/keeper wasn't properly seated that second time, the measurements would be way out of spec. And it most likely would have grenaded right after starting, if the shim/keeper(s) were out of place. It should be easy enough to rule out by looking at the top end--the inside of that bucket should have evidence of the misalignment.

Is it possible that a cam chain tensioner didn't get tightened all the way and after a number of miles, it backed off enough for the chain to get slack in it and mess up the timing?
 
#29 ·
Yeah, he re-checked it after resetting the shim. I was there through the whole process but I was asleep for a good while of it, which is why I know this in such detail. The CCT bolt was still in place when we pulled the bike apart post-grenading. The spring was installed, so unless the pawl let go of its own accord, I'm not sure how it could have been a factor (but I'm no expert, so enlighten me! )
 
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