Kawasaki Vulkan 1500 Technical maintenance - Part 1

The mileage on this remarkable motorcycle has approached 70,000 km, and it could go just as much further, but a "disease" has let it down - the first gear slips out. Of course, with such a large engine capacity, it is easy to start off in second gear, but, as is well known, this cannot be done for structural reasons.

A superficial diagnosis revealed compression lower than the minimum permissible norm and an almost non-functioning rear cylinder. The spark plugs, when unscrewed, turned out to be black and sooty.

Therefore, we drain the "water" and remove the engine from the frame. The antifreeze, if it can be called that, turned out to be a foul-smelling yellowish liquid upon inspection.

Under the left fake generator cover, there was an oil leak and horrendous wiring twists.

The engine is removed and ready for disassembly.

I decided to start with the front cylinder, unscrewing the top cover:

Then we loosen the screws of the upper camshaft bearing and the cylinder head, and remove them:

Next, the camshaft

The camshaft bearing of the second cylinder is heavily worn:

Then we remove the cylinder head

The cylinder and the piston.

We do the same with the second cylinder.

We remove the valves:

For 70,000 km, it's not that bad.

Simultaneously, we remove the generator cover:

We loosen two bolts, by the way, these were tightened with brutal force.

Then we remove the generator rotor

And the balancer shaft gear

To be continued.