Hydro-lock?

[Venturous Randy]

I have a friends 96 Goldwing in the garage that appears to have had events of hydro-locking. On two occasions he blew that starter solenoid when the engine locked up and then he broke the gears that interface with the starter. I am getting ready to pull the engine and the cover from the broken gears and see what will need to be done to fix this.

I was just wondering if anyone has encountered this on a wing? I am going to have the carbs rebuilt at a shop once I figure if this is fixable.

RandyA

Edited January 19, 2013 by Venturous Randy

[wrenchrob]

Wish I could help but Nope.

[Marcarl]

Don't know much about Wings, other than Eck has one and SilverT says he has one as well.

But if the gears are gone on the starter then something in the cylinder would seem like a reasonable thought. It could be raw fuel, heavy fuel mixture, coolant, oil, or maybe even pre-fireing of the cylinder.

A new tool now available is an inspection camera. It has a 3 foot probe you can stick inside the cylinder to see if there is any scoring on the walls, this might give a clue as to what's happening.

Another question would be, is there coolant in the oil and\or does the coolant go down at all.

Just some thoughts.

[Venturous Randy]

But if the gears are gone on the starter then something in the cylinder would seem like a reasonable thought. It could be raw fuel, heavy fuel mixture, coolant, oil, or maybe even pre-fireing of the cylinder.

A new tool now available is an inspection camera. It has a 3 foot probe you can stick inside the cylinder to see if there is any scoring on the walls, this might give a clue as to what's happening.

Another question would be, is there coolant in the oil and\or does the coolant go down at all.

Just some thoughts.

 

There has not been an indication of any fuel or coolant in the oil or any coolant loss. On all the times that this has happened, there has been a short period of time before there were repairs on the bike. I did not pull the plugs and see if any of them were wet, due to all the plastic that had to be removed. In hindsight, maybe I should have.

RandyA

[MiCarl]

Sure it's possible for them to hydro-lock.

 

If it did and all that broke is the starter gears he got off lucky. I think there is also some chance that there may be a bent connecting rod.

[Squidley]

Thats what Yamaha claims happened to Zipcodes bike, and it threw the rod right out the side of the block. I would tend to agree with Carl, it more than likely will have some rod damage because that force is going somewhere.

[Jactana]

I don't know about Hydrolock on Goldwings, but it happens on other Honda bikes. From having owned a Valkyrie in the past, and currently owning a Honda CBX, I've spent a bit of time on owner forums for both these bikes, and there is quite a bit of documented dicussion around Hydrolock. Both of these bikes have an "automatic" vacumn operated petcocks prone to failure, causing fuel to flow unrestricted and fill cylinders with fuel. If your friends bike only has starter gear issues he's lucky, the accounts I've read had serious internal damage. I'm installing a small low pressure fuel pump similar to the Venture's to prevent an occurrence of this on my CBX, and ease the cold starting. Here's a link to an article on the CBX site on Hydrolock. Ron

 

http://www.cbxworld.com/modules.php?name=NukeWrap&page=/features/tech.html