Pulled the oil pan and found these bits of metal - help me ID?

[mikerophone]

New to me 81 850G with 50k miles. PO has someone break into his storage unit and steal his brothers BMW and try to steal this luckily the battery was dead. Got it for a good deal but without keys. He says I will need to look into the clutch cause he "burned it up" going up a steep, slippery forest forest service road 2 years ago and had to do a roadside oil change and power shift to get ~200 miles home.

I'm going through and cleaning it up, servicing the carbs, and will be replacing the head gasket and leaking base gasket and likely do rings and lap the valves while I've got the head and jugs off but tonight I pulled the oil pan to check the strainsrt on the oil pickup and found these bits:



Here is the other side of that biggest chunk, sandard sized razor blade for scale but it is approximately .5" wide and a little over 1/8" thick. Soft, brittle and scored, with what looks like a black coating along the edge? My daughter was helping clean up and threw away the paper towel that I had them wrapped up in so I can't put a caliper on it but they wer soft, seemed like an alloy of some kind and in small chunks. There was also a small price of what looks like wire.



What could they be from? Piece of a piston skirt, bottom edge of a jug perhaps? They look too thick to be part of the clutch to me unless maybe they are chips off the basket?

If if anyone has an idea and how catastrophic it might be let me know. I'll be pulling the clutch cover tomorrow night for more clues. Haven't got my gaskets ordered yet and have to replace the rngine in my daughter car first but funds are tight right now so I will be slowly rebuilding this until spring when I was hoping to have it on the road...

Here's the pick up screen:



There was a fair amount of sludge in the pan not a lot of metal shavings but the chunk of metal have me concerned:

[JEEPRUSTY]

are thos bits mettalic?
it sort of looks like plastic to me

[blowerbike]

so you haven't pulled the clutch cover or clutch pack yet i take it?
if not you may want to and maybe find the cause.

ok clutch is still in it..
the only small wire i'm aware of is for the oil rings(not all have this)...not likely where your came from.

[SNOWBLIND78]

Strange. They look almost rubbery and plastic ?

This is an uneducated two cents but is their any possibility it could be part of a gasket that became swelled up from sitting in old oil/gas?

Maybe the PO used some type of rtv or improper material when they reattached the pan after an oil change.

Hope you figure it out and that nothing is damaged

[mikerophone]

Thanks all - they were metal, but very brittle and scored. I;m 99.8% sure they were metal, for once I wish my daughter wasn't so eager to help clean up! I dug through the trash but there were so many paper towels in there and pieces of gasket since I spent the whole afternoon scraping oil and dirt off the case, and removed the oil pan and stator cover and scraped the gaskets off both of those.

Very strange. Blowerbike, I'll be pulling the clutch tomorrow night, will report back with my findings. It sure seemed like an aluminum type allot when I had it in my hands. It had little score marks following the contour of the radius. They almost looked like miniature brake rotors, but obviously much smaller, softer and not at shiny or smooth.

Hopefiully I'll have the answer to this tomorrow night, if not it will be a couple of weeks at the soonest before I can pull the head and jugs to look deeper if not.

[blowerbike]

your clutch fibers have an aluminum backing plate with material glued to it...kinda thick....never know.

[mikerophone]

your clutch fibers have an aluminum backing plate with material glued to it...kinda thick....never know.

I'm hopeful that is all it is. Since I haven't ever heard the bike run, who knows if there are other problems. I did pull the plugs and turn it over several times by hand before I paid the PO and jumped the starter solenoid before I had keys made and she turned over just fine without any binding or unusual noises, so I am betting its the clutch, the pieces just seemed a little thick to be clutch fibers or pieces of the plate...Should know tomorrow. Thanks again!

[amcook]

Have you checked oil pump/filter

[Brendan W]

Trying to get my head around a 'burned up clutch' and resulting 'roadside oil change' which still transmitted drive for 'power shifting' and what that all might look like. The clutch looks about the right radius for the marks on the large piece - hopefully all will be revealed when it's pulled.
This is a VFR

http://vfrworld.com/forums/showthread.php/30448-Burned-up-clutch

[greg78gs750]

looks like aluminum from the clutch basket to me, first thing i thought without reading the post, post provides confirmation. find out what is going on with the clutch first. and thanks for the crisp photos, it is astounding the low quality that is frequently offered on the forums....

[mikerophone]

Have you checked oil pump/filter

Filter was clean, I'll get inside the clutch tonight.

Trying to get my head around a 'burned up clutch' and resulting 'roadside oil change' which still transmitted drive for 'power shifting' and what that all might look like. The clutch looks about the right radius for the marks on the large piece - hopefully all will be revealed when it's pulled.
This is a VFR
http://vfrworld.com/forums/showthrea...rned-up-clutch

Yeah that all but confirms it, sure looks like friction material or the backing plate now that I look at those pics. It's been a while since I've been in a motorcycle clutch and it was a Honda, until I discovered the GS, I was a Honda man all the way...the material looks way thicker in pictures on here. Hope it's not from the basket.

looks like aluminum from the clutch basket to me, first thing i thought without reading the post, post provides confirmation. find out what is going on with the clutch first. and thanks for the crisp photos, it is astounding the low quality that is frequently offered on the forums....

Thank you. iPhone 6, this camera is great, got as close as I could, no macro attachment but still pretty clear.

[londonboards]

I had this little lot in my GS1150 sump:



be sure you take the filter off completely because the big bits will be inside the filter not outside it.

Mine was caused by a complete clutch explosion in circumstances unknown. I bought the bike blind in eBay and someone had replaced the clutch, pistons and liners and left that little lot inside.

I am afraid you are going need to do a complete strip now. When I did that I found big ends and mains that were shot too.

See my blog: Metal bits in the engine.

You might even find that the gearbox has had a visitation from some of the circulating metal. Check those 4 bearings as well.

The truth will out once you look at the clutch. But be warned. Someone might have replaced the clutch and left you with a bad bottom end.

You have some work to do.

Greetings

[mikerophone]

Thanks Richard - I remember your posts and blog. Quite the ordeal for sure...

I'm hopeful that it's just a few small bits from the clutch and that there are nowhere near as many as you had. I'll pull the filter screen and clutch assembly tonight or worst case Wednesday and report back. Fingers crossed that it's all ok. If I end up rebuilding it so be it, but I'd rather not go as deep as the crank and trans, guess we'll see. Worst case I'll source a 1000 engine or part this bike out. I've and wanted an 850G for years and it took me a year to find this one. There are none in the area or at least none for sale.

[mikerophone]

Clutch carnage confirmed. This baby is BURNED up for sure, it got a little warm in there. It's a completely shrapneled drive plate, hence the contour of that first large piece in my first post Bits behind the gasket inside the cover: Might start a new thread as I have questions about what to do next. I've contacted a member that has a used clutch for sale but I'm thinking I may also need the primary driven gear assembly and until get all of that and compare the 2 I don't have the funds right now to go deeper. The bits in the oil pan in my original post dropped down into the pan through the drain hole behind the gearshift shaft, (pan is still off, see the light in the photo below) would they really be able to get into the gearbox as Richard eludes to above? There are no crazy grooves in either set of notches but then again, not 100% sure what to look for, it's a little charred in here. Used my iPad so the quality of the photos aren't as good, but here's more the claws were ground up and worked their way out of the holes, crazy...here's what I saw when I pulled the first driven plate and expected to see another drive plate, well I saw parts of a drive plate but no drive plate claws:

[cowboyup3371]

So what causes that, being overly hard on the clutch or just old age?