Sunday afternoon me and the kids are in the garden, I’m washing down m’bike. I’m at the front, when I hear, daddy I’m just cleaning out your exhaust. Yep, you’ve guessed it, Jnrs got the hose pipe down the exhaust on full wack.
oh **** oh **** oh ****!! noooooooo. I grab the hose off him! what to do next! ok, I’ll start it. Now, thankfully it starts first time, everything seems fine.
This morning, I get on the bike to go to work, I start the bike. Nothing. Jnr, on asking if I’m ok, is ashured away by the Mrs, she can see I’m gonna lose m’rag! I try a couple of times more, all I get is the starter motor.
oh **** oh **** oh ****!!
I pace around the garden, all I can see are pound signs, thinking about the engine rebuild ahead. I decide to give it one more go, it just starts to catch. I bit more and she start, pheew. God Bless Mr Suzuki!
Seems fine after an hour on the road, I’m hoping all the water has evaporated and theirs no lasting damage, we’ll see I guess!
If it was to bad you wouldnt be able to start .Wouldnt go into the oil think about it exhaust to head through exhaust valves to cylinder . should be ok if you’ve been running it
Should be fine, cant see any reason that it would of even gone inot the engine but if it did it’ll be okay. Ive had my trail bikes and crossers in the water plenty of times in the past where ive gone that bit too deep and got the exhaust full of water, never been a problem.
As it happens I think you were lucky. There is somethingcalled a hydraulic lock which occurs when the floats don’t stop the fuelflowing into the engine when it’s turned off. Start the engine with a fuel hydrauliclock in there and the engine can be a write off.
makes no difference, if the water washed down the manifold and into an open cylinder then you would have detonated your top end from the pressure caused, and probably snapped a conrod for the affected cylinder.
if that were me i would have taken the pipes straight off and inspected before chancing firing it up.
moral of the story, only trust kids with a sponge or wash your own bike.
No point pulling the pipes off to check. The top end will still eat itself if it’s full of water if you just remove the pipes. Just pop the spark plugs out. No compression means no hydraulic lock. Spin it on the starter and see if water shoots out.
Nothing to worry about. You would need alot of pressure to force the water straight up from the bottom of the headers.
It started so it’s all good. Has it got a lambda sensor on the exhaust?(sign would be a random wire from the exhaust) if so you might want to change that if you still have problems.
Well a common cause for hydraulic lock on bikes was fuelwhich is why I mentioned it. The manufacturers fix was to fit vacuum operated petroltaps so when the engine was off, no vacuum and valve would shut off the fuel.
But you had fluid (water) going up the exhaust pipe. If thewater found an open exhaust valve at the engine it could possibly fill the borejust like fuel would via the other side.
The fix then if you suspect this has happened is to removethe spark plugs and run the starter to see if a bore is full and at the sametime it will evac the bore. (ps don’t get too close to look… fuel in the eye bloody hurts )
This is damage that can occur from a hydraulic lock.
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