DougRoost

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May 3, 2001
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Very sorry to hear about this one. In the interest of science, don't forget to tell us the circumstances when it happened as well as the year and any modifications that had been made. Good luck.
 

YZDezertGuy

Member
Apr 18, 2001
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I agree w/ FMX. My riding buddy has a 01 stock YZ250F and he's on it ALL the time when we ride MX which is always. 2 weeks ago he melted the piston to the cylinder. Havent heard much other then that yet. Let us know whats goin on!
 

Rich Rohrich

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Humai - When you know what really went wrong please be sure and let us know. Thanks.
 

Humai

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Feb 6, 2000
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Gee, you start a new thread and then do some work on your bike and look what happens to the thread!

Well, the post mortem's complete. The prognosis: The crank has fractured, clean through the crankpin. The big end bearing assy was effectively holding the two halves of the crankpin in place. With its new two piece crank, this WR250F was consequently the easiest engine ever to split the cases on! It's possible that the crack may have started at the oil feed hole.

Surprisingly, not much other damage has occured. Of course, the crank is toast, and the rod has contacted the crankwheels as they closed up though BDC. Also, the flywheel, while no doubt "gyroscoping" with the support of only one main bearing as it spun down during the emergency shutdown, lightly kissed a couple of the magneto coil cores. I'll replace the main bearings just to be safe. Otherwise, there is no damage and a minimum of metallic schrapnel to clean up.

To my admittedly untrained eye, it looks like a component defect. This is 600 mile easy single track trail-ridden WR250F that has rarely if ever clipped the rev limiter.Every other component in the engine looked like it was brand new.

Although the WRs are sold new with no warranty here, I intend to have a serious fireside chat with my local Yamaha rep about this.

I'll let you know how it goes.
 
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penguin

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Feb 19, 2000
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Jeez Rich, too much caffeine? :eek: Yeah, we would all like to know the actual facts about how this failure occurred, might save someon else an expensive lesson before the fact
 

Humai

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Feb 6, 2000
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Crank Failure Update

Good news: The local dealer and Yamaha itself has taken this issue extremely seriously and has offered to replace all affected parts free of charge. This type of break is according to them very unusual. Yamaha will be running analyses on the broken parts.

Hats off to Yamaha!
 

Tree Trimmer

Member
Oct 4, 2000
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That's good to hear. Yamaha will surely learn something from that if they actully analyze it all. They need that motor to hang tough especially if they are made to run 13500 rpm. :)
 

Kramer

Member
Jan 19, 2000
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Sorry to hear about your loss. It's great to hear that they're taking this seriously. It just a shame that it happened to such a new machine.

My guess is he wants to know about the grey wire because it's rumored to disable the rev limiter.

I seriously doubt that is the case, since according to the YAMAHA wiring diagram that grey wire terminates into the 2 prong connector.

It has done so since the beginning, 98 WR400fk.

And, all non-US models are without the connection.

Is a rev limiter only needed for those of us in the US? If so, why was it omitted from the schematic in every manual??
 
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Humai

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Feb 6, 2000
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Rev limiters

As Kiwimike points out, my bike is a Euro model. That means it comes stock with YZ tank/seat combo, the "grey wire mod" already done by the factory and a one piece all stainless muffler system. Cam timing is set to "WR timing" as with the US spec machines.

I "YZ timed" my bike and fitted the muffler off my stock YZ400F to it. Otherwise, the bike is stock. Interestingly, the YZ timing mod reduces the need to rev the daylights out of the bike - on many offroad tracks, a gear higher is possible with YZ timing over WR timing.

All four-stroke YZs and WRs, regardless of country spec, have rev limiters to the best of my knowledge.
 

Humai

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Feb 6, 2000
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Crank Failure Update

As I wait for the new main bearings to arrive from Japan, I spoke yesterday to the local Yamaha Motor Company tech rep about this problem.

In our country (pop. 3.5 million), four WR250Fs have had crankpin fractures like mine. Extrapolated to US proportions, that suggests something in the order of 300 WRs failing in the US, if bike population and people population are proportional (which they probably aren't, but I digress . . .).

Interestingly, no crankpin failures have occurred on YZ250Fs in this country. I understand that this may be at variance to what is happening in the US and other countries, based on one or two reports of YZ250F crank failures on various message boards.

The four WRs have all failed relatively early in their lives - my 600 mile failure is typical. This suggests that higher mileage bikes that have survived a good thrashing are probably not going to fail.

This WR-but-not-YZ crank failure phenomenon has got the technicians looking at things like crank harmonic vibration and the effect of the much heavier WR flywheel on crank reliability. Suffice to say that, according to the tech rep, the technical guys are still working on the problem.

Yamaha has accepted full responsibility and will cover WR crankpin fractures for as long as it takes, according to Yamaha. I have been impressed with their response to this problem so far.
 

smarttoys

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Apr 29, 2001
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I know of one YZ250F crank failure. Actually a rod failure, broken rod punch a hole in the crankcase. Yamaha did pay for the repair. Yamaha has been pretty good about covering some repairs if deemed premature failure. It also helps to have a good dealer and a service manager that has good relations with the Yamaha rep.
 

JasonJ

Member
Jun 15, 2001
1,150
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Huh!, Well,,,, It sounds like those Yamaha techs have some pretty half baked ideas huh Rich,,,,,;) maybe you ought to go close their threads down and show em how to rub peanut butter on a fish! :eek:
Its great to here how Yamaha is supporting a bike they sell with out a warranty. I suppose they realize what a big part of repeat sales are service and word of mouth related. I have herd that the dealer has alot to do with it though, makes the few bucks diffrence between their prices less important I suppose.
 

kudzukudzu

Member
Sep 2, 2001
46
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JasonJ,

I'm with ya! I found this thread very interesting and useful. I think the members of this board need to be given a little bit of benefit o' the doubt from our esteemed moderator. While I'm a relatively new poster, I have read for quite some time and find that the members of this board can take even the most mundane/absurd topic and bring some real value to the discussion. Unbelieveable how much the quality of posts here are superior to the vast majority of other boards I have seen.

Regards to all, and enjoy your families this weekend during a very trying time.
 

Rich Rohrich

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Originally posted by JasonJ
Huh!, Well,,,, It sounds like those Yamaha techs have some pretty half baked ideas huh Rich,,,,,;)

Yamaha reps aren't coming in here posting the unsubstantiated drivel that little kids are in this thread. We still don't know why people are experiencing crank failures or even if the number of failures is statistically high. The fact that Yamaha is standing behind their product is a good sign.

The drivel has been removed from this thread.
 

Rich Rohrich

Moderator / BioHazard
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Originally posted by kudzukudzu

I think the members of this board need to be given a little bit of benefit o' the doubt from our esteemed moderator.

Don't hold your breath.

Originally posted by kudzukudzu
Unbelieveable how much the quality of posts here are superior to the vast majority of other boards I have seen.

And why do you think that is? I've tried to give people the benefit of the doubt over the last few months and it's done nothing but muddy the waters as some of the posts in this thread clearly proved. That's over.

Useful stuff will stay, useless crap will go. Hopefully with school starting up the junk post count will drop on it's own.That's the end of the discussion on that in this thread. If you guys have suggestions or complaints about the way the forum is run send me an e-mail rich@dirtrider.net . I'll listen to what you have to say, but I won't promise you'll get what you want.


Back to the topic at hand 250 crank failures.
 
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