Talk to Yorkshire gooner, although he specialises in 08+ he may be able to help. The other option is consider breaking the bike, wheels, forks, frame and bodywork soon add up. I did the maths on this a few times when I needed an engine. Work on £500 - £600 LABOUR to swap plus misc costs like fluids and oil changes, then add cost to strip and rebuild with gaskets and parts. You are prob looking at £1250 minimum spend if you have to pay garage rates for it all.
I beg to differ scooby, I owned an S2000 for several years and not having any problems with the engine myself, many others did and re-built the engine only to have it fail again after a few thousand miles due to the tight tolerances at the factory and the fibre re-enforced liners or something. As far as I know on the forums etc nobody successfully re-built an F20C, it was more cost effective to buy a second hand low mileage unsealed lump and drop it in. How much would it realistically cost for a bottom end re-build on an 04RR compared to a buying a second hand one?
sorry but what are we talking about here? your picking up on any engine can be rebuilt?? of course it can,how do you think it got built in he 1st place,how do you think engine tuners get more power? from stripping and rebuilding the engine.
No I'm saying nobody that I know of has successfully re-built an F20C Honda S2000 engine. After being stripped honed/ polished and whatever else they do to it, the engines have always catastrophically failed again after a few thousand sometimes hundred miles. I just wondered if the same applied to the fireblade engine too?
no,i've had (more than I care to remember)blade engines in bits+rebuilt. it comes to the point of cost though,to reline the barrels takes time,money and not a lot of people do it,so usually works out easier/cheaper to just buy a new block. but,regardless of internal damage,theres a good couple of hundred quid in gaskets,shells+rings alone putting the engine back together. my last rebuild cost me £800 with some engine work done also,rebuilt gearbox.but thata with me dropping and re fitting the motor,you could double the price if you want the mechanic to do that also.
So realistically the OP is better off finding a good low mileage running motor and swapping the bad one out rather than FULLY re-building the bad one? I guess it's 6 of one and half a dozen of the other. It could only need minor internal engine work however in my experience of re-building engines etc a new internal component/s can put additional stress on the older components causing premature failure.
as Arthur said,sometimes it's better the devil you know. when one of my blade engines started to go,(scored barrels,and then turned out knackered pressure plate on my STM clutch),it worked out cheaper to buy a new engine@ £1500.(it was freshly built very trick WSB spec motor),It seized a rod and put a hole in the crank cases after 4 days.......shit happens. yu can pick up a decent motor for around 1k even less,problem is you don't really have a clue what condition it's in,but that's the risk you take.if theres limited damage to the OP's engine,then I'd stick with it if everything else looks ok inside,but even at that point your into big money purely from a labour point of view.
Thanks for all the posts. This has been a real tricky one to decide on what to do. I have said to BSD to drop the engine out and open it up to find out the extent of the damage as its only going to cost me an extra hour labour to find out the damage. However a friend has just found a really low mileage engine at a good price which seems like I should get that whilst its on offer, my friend is also offering to fit the engine for me which is a huge bonus, so maybe I'll pick the bike up before they do anything to it. Does anybody know what a 'noisy' engine is worth, if anything? I'm told I could get £500 for it.
BTW - BSD quoted £350 + vat to swap the engine out with a replacement. I don't know if that included fluids etc or if that was labour only.
I'd buy the low mileage engine and take your mate up on his offer, get involved yourself as you might learn something and enjoy it. It's quite satisfying to fire up an engine for the first time and hear it purr. To be honest your damaged engine is probably worth just scrap value, nobody in their right mind is going to pay £500.00 for an engine with an unknown internal engine issue, having said that there's a lot of fools out there willing to part with their cash.
I have seen alot of running engines with no reported issues selling for 500 and some for alot less so I think you would be lucky to fetch that kind of money to be honest but you never know I would strip and sell things like engine casings, gearbox (as cassette type so easy job)
Wish I could find a running engine with no issues for £500! Where are you looking? I thought £500 sounded high but what is it worth? Unfortunately I don't have the time, tools and more importantly, the skill to be stripping engines as much fun as that sounds.
Last year I was looking for a gearbox and noticed gearboxes were listed at 250 but engines on auction on the bay were ending at 4-450 every now and then, I will keep an eye out for you if you want.
I bought an 04 engine for £650 including throttle bodies and some loom parts with airbox injectors etc. Best bet is to look for private auctions and make the chap an offer..
Lets put it this way, there's a guy listing an 05 engine on ebay with gearbox for a kit car conversion for around £1800. Crashed bike money IMO. I know someone who might take your oil filler cap Seriously though, there are some very saleable parts on the engine i.e. Engine covers, Generator etc.
