Hayabusa engine questions...reliability and rebuilds!

Hi Sam, I am really excited for you and I am looking forward to seeing the pictures of your new car!

How much work was done to the engine is dependent on the size of the engine.  The 1300 / 1340's are a lower stress configuration so they are closer to the original Hayabusa but there are differences required to handle the stress of driving a four wheel vehicle.  These engines are often driven for 90+ hours.  The 1500 is a totally different animal.  It has a stroked crank, clutch basket, and valve train changes... to name a few.  The 1500's get overhauled at 40 hours but there is some wording in the owners manual that says "Under race conditions, the engine should run for no more than 40 hours before being returned to the factory for a rebuild.  Engines which are not raced, regularly cover over 90 hours without requiring attention."  

Everyone want's to find a cheaper way to overhaul the engines and you can find a bike mechanic that will do it for less then half the cost of a Reputable Radical shop.  These shops deal with the uniqueness of this application and know exactly what to do.  I have heard too many horror stories about the guys that use great bike mechanics only to have major problems... Trust me it isn't worth it!

You are lucky being in the UK because you have some great choices.  You can either go directly to the Radical Factory or you can go to RLM Racing who have an outstanding reputation.  Dan from RLM is a regular contributor to the Forum and knows more about these engines then anyone I know.  Hopefully he will chime in with his opinion.

Charley

Hello,

I am about to send my Radical engine off for rebuild (just engine). Already removed engine from  car and boxed the engine up. However on the engine check in sheet it lists Clutch Push Rod and Paddleshift bracket.

I was wondering what these two parts are?

Thank you!

-Nic H

@charleyhradicalsportscarregistry-comhey charley, this reminds me for the same service requirements in motocross.. i mean like swapping out rodpins every 15h and pistons 40h is just not an option. My 450 ran 100-120h over 1 season with portet and remapped engine only riding heavy sands, easy 4-5h a day. Never had issues ir signs of wear.

so my question is.. WHY does the 1500cc engin require a 40h rebuild, and what actually? What is bring swapped out when a hayabusa engine also with turbo can be ridden on street and drag for YEARS without any big maintenance then oil and filter

@nich, The Clutch push rod is under the clutch slave cylinder and transfers pressure from the slave cylinder to the clutch which is on the other side of the engine.  The Paddle shift bracket is the bracket that holds the throttle blipper on paddle shifted cars.

Posted by: @lunatic

@charleyhradicalsportscarregistry-comhey charley, this reminds me for the same service requirements in motocross.. i mean like swapping out rodpins every 15h and pistons 40h is just not an option. My 450 ran 100-120h over 1 season with portet and remapped engine only riding heavy sands, easy 4-5h a day. Never had issues ir signs of wear.

 

so my question is.. WHY does the 1500cc engin require a 40h rebuild, and what actually? What is bring swapped out when a hayabusa engine also with turbo can be ridden on street and drag for YEARS without any big maintenance then oil and filter

Hi Robert (@lunatic), The short answer is that these engines are under higher stresses and loads than their motorcycle counterparts. The 1500's have much higher stresses than a standard Suzuki Hayabusa engine.  I believe the compression ratio is raised to ~13.5 : 1 on the 1500's compared to ~12.5:1 on the 1340's which causes more internal stress on the components.  Additionally, the parts are under a lot more stress because the engine is being used in an automotive environment and is pushing much more weight and putting the power down through more wheels.  Another factor is that in an automotive racing application the engines spend much more time at full throttle than would normally be used on a street driven motorcycle.

Typically during an overhaul there are a lot of transmission parts that are replaced. For example when I had my last 1500 overhauled the transmission needed a new 1st gear (driven), 2nd gear (driven), 5th gear (output H/D), 6th gear (output H/D), Gear shift cam plate, selector drum, and two new shift forks.  The clutch plates were also replaced as well as all of the bearings in the engine and the cam chain and all of the cam chain guides.  It is also very common for the starter clutch cover to be replaced due to cracking.  

Many of the engine failures that I have heard about were due to either transmission failure or cam chain related.  I am sure others will add their experiences on the causes of the engine failures that they have seen.

Charley,

Thanks again for all the help and insight! I was able to make sure when I sent the engine out all the needed parts were along. Now just waiting patiently for engine to return...

As always great resource and always so helpful!

Thank you!

Nic H

@charleyhradicalsportscarregistry-com Just read your post and you mentioned rebuild being @ 40h in race conditions and 90h in non-race. My RTC shows 49 hours, I know that previous owner raced it in 20-25min club races up until RTC showed 32 hours.

I know that a lot of it is subjective, when I pulled the Life ECU data the Run-Time showed 11.5 hours and not what RTC shows, my guess is that between 2015 and 2020 the car was in storage and it completely drained the ECU battery so the stats been flushed, and only when I started running it, it started counting usage from beginning.

I honestly don't know what I'm asking here for, maybe whether I should run the engine above 50 hours since I've not been racing it just doing Track Days for now. My Radical dealer says to not run it beyond 50 hours, but it seems such a waste that out of my 11.5h Run-Time, actual 3.5h were above 3000rpm and it seems warming up the car will run up that +/- 40 hours in no time.

I wonder if there is some anecdotal data available on 1500cc engines. How long? Under what conditions? What was the damage? Was racing involved or only track days? etc.

Anyway, just feeling chatty, also posted my

Hi Tom (@bbong718), I would recommend getting your engine overhauled in the very near future.  I know the Radical manual says you can go longer but the only people I know of that have had good luck running engines much over 40ish hours are people with 1340's.  If you had the engine overhauled and you knew that you were not spending a lot of time in the high RPM range you could likely extend the hours a bit.  But, since you don't have first hand knowledge of how hard the engine was driven, I wouldn't take any chances.  It is safer to overhaul it than to have a gear fly through the case.  

When you have the engine overhauled I would strongly recommend sending it to Spring Mountain to do the engine work.  They have been doing it longer than anyone else in the U.S. and they seem to get the best results.  And in case you are wondering, I don't work for Spring Mountain, but I have deal with them a lot and have confidence in their work.  Many of the U.S. dealers send their engines to SM for overhaul.

Regarding the Logbook that you downloaded from your Life ECU... When you see the comment at the top that says "NoRTC" that means that the ECU battery has died, or lost charge, and the information may not be accurate.  This is very common because the ECU only gets power when the master switch is on, so when cars are in storage the battery in the ECU doesn't get charged.  Many people think that by having a battery charger on the ECU battery will get charged, but it doesn't.  

@charleyhradicalsportscarregistry-com ok, duly noted. I will schedule a rebuild ASAP. RTC says 49h so it's well above the recommended time.

My dealer says they use SM for rebuilds, so I should be in good hands. I also heard the same from everyone I talked to, so thanks for confirming.

I wondered what the NoRTC was, I only skimmed over the "outdated" Life ECU software and raw documentation. When I was searching here, I found someone mentioned the Life ECU has an onboard PC-Motherboard-Like battery. These tend to run dry to support memory state on the ECU, and once they do, all is lost, makes sense if not employing some stateful data storage. (wonder why they did it this way, having some DOM method would truly make it "Life", amount of writes it needed to support?)

My 1300 with turbo pushing 400to the wheels has allread reached 30h this year.. still no issiues except oil leaks from head cover gasket and starter cover.. where i have problems locating both leaks for some reason

charley, is this a common problemmeith a brand new headcover gasket to leak?

Does anyone have a source for a K7 1300 Hayabusa engine manual?
found it: https://www.manualslib.com/download/926988/Suzuki-Gsx1300r.html

I spun a rod bearing (Cyl 1) 🙁 and will need to know all of the internal torque specs.
I also noticed the baffle plate was cracked:

 Is this a Radical specific addition? I don't see this plate in the catalog.
Thanks!

@tertre-rouge Yes it is a Radical specific part. Your particular one is likely not available and the newer version will also require the matching pick up as they are a different thickness to what you have.

@Ken, Thanks for the info on the baffle plate.
I came across this air oil separator that also has an integrated coolant route to heat the oil. Two things that would presumably be very beneficial to a wet sump car.

Does anyone have any experience with or knowledge of this being applied to a wet sump Hayabusa setup?