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Ninja 300 engine failure/noise/knocking/rattling

34K views 66 replies 25 participants last post by  Barnee_n300 
#1 ·
2013 with less than 6000 miles.

Aftermath




Comparing what a normal rod should look like



The break down:
Rod bolt nut backs out completely and falls down into oil pan.
Rod bearing spin and burn up oil since it's no longer torqued down. Notice the dark discoloration on rod end.
Rod bolt backs out completely.
Rod cap bends away from journal and hell breaks loose.
 
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#9 · (Edited)
It's just a disaaster of Ninja's quality IMO. Should I worry about the bike I'm gonna buy ?
Let me ask you....How did you break your bike in ? Baby it or harsh (hard) at the first ride ?
 
#10 ·
Hardware failure on the piston rod ends. The nut and bolt in question weren't torqued down enough and the bolt came loose. On others, that same bolt and nut sheered. It's only a very tiny number of bikes though so it's nothing to be freaking out about since every manufactured vehicle will have catastrophic failures such as this. The companies though usually do a very good job of cleaning these kinds of messes up though so it doesn't become a huge shit storm of terrible PR. The OP should be seeing a new engine/transmission at the least for this even if he's out of warranty. A properly built engine shouldn't be shitting itself after a year even with a warranty in place, from a part that the end user has no reason at all to be taking apart and putting back together and even if ridden very hard, wouldn't be the first thing to fail anyways.
 
#12 ·
Didn't Porsche just have the exact same problem recently? Then it punched a hole, and would start a fire when the oil poured out.

http://www.autoblog.com/2014/03/19/porsche-replace-911-gt3-engines-recall-official/

"Porsche has confirmed that is has identified the problem as resulting "from a loosened screw joint on the connecting rod." The loose connecting rod, Porsche found, damaged the crankcase, which in turn resulted in oil leaking and then – in at least two cases – igniting."
 
#14 ·
Would it be worth for the people whose warranty has run out, to check the torque on the conrod bolts? Should be as simple as removing the sump? Correct me if im wrong :)
 
#15 ·
it could also be a bad batch of bolts that either stretch or just snap, but like said earlier, if you look at the amount of bikes sold compared to the amount of failures we have reported here, its not worth stressing over.the Aussie bike comes with 2 year warranty standard. i bought an extra 2 years when i bought the bike only cos it was a new model, was only a few hundred dollars, fingers crossed i never need to use it
 
#21 ·
now look at how many thousands of bikes that have been sold world wide.you would expect about a 2% failure rate with any product, that is quite par for the course.we have over 10,000 members and only 4 reported failures.

even 2% failure of 10,000 your looking at 200 bikes. we have a *long* way to go to get there
 
#24 ·
2013 with less than 6000 miles.

Aftermath




Comparing what a normal rod should look like



The break down:
Rod bolt nut backs out completely and falls down into oil pan.
Rod bearing spin and burn up oil since it's no longer torqued down. Notice the dark discoloration on rod end.
Rod bolt backs out completely.
Rod cap bends away from journal and hell breaks loose.
Sorry to repost the pictures here, but as a motorcycle technician I can tell you the most likely reason for this failure. Notice the fact that the connecting rod broken area is blackened, that means that this area became very hot - not from the bolt backing off but because of lack of oil pressure. The sequence of events goes like this: Oil pressure is lost, the connecting rod bearing gets extremely hot from friction as the bearing seizes, then the rod starts to knock hard due to the excessive clearance and the hammering action causes the overheated bolts to stretch and either a bolt will break or a nut will back off as in this case and then the separation occurrs. The root cause is not anything to do with the hardware, it was most likely lack of oil in the engine.
If this were a loose bolt from the start, it would have happened within 100 miles and there would be no sign of excessive heat.
Not to accuse the poster of neglecting to check his/her oil level, but this is a high revving engine that will use some oil, so the moral of the story is that you have to maintain your oil level.
 
#27 ·
I don't believe it was loss of oil pressure itself as the piston is practically pristine as well as the small rod end where the gudgeon pin goes. If there was an oil issue, that pin is under the highest mechanical load and heat stresses and would have seized or failed long before the crank shaft end. Usually a loss of oil pressure will prevent the oil from reaching the higher parts of the engine cylinder and thus starts creating a lot of friction and drag on the cylinder and causing the engine to heat up very quickly. Usually resulting in the engine overheating and seizing. If oil wasn't able to get into the rod end bearing, then it was a localized issue specific to that part and not due to overall low oil pressure. While it's obviously important to check oil level constantly, I don't think this particular issue was something that would have been noticed from the oil sight glass.

Also, looking at that picture better, the nut didn't back off the screw and fall into the pan, it completely sheered in two. But like you said, it wasn't the cause but probably a result of something. Seeing how the bearing shattered into confetti would have me thinking that the bearing itself may have been faulty. Happens. Used to visually inspect and find bad bearings from the factory every once in a while and our aircraft had the luxury of getting each bearing physically inspected before being used. I'm not too sure they fine tooth comb it at the factory or if the inspector is really good at finding imperfections and imbalances in the bearing prior to sending it down the line to be used in the engine. We had a failure/bad bearing about 4% of the time and these were very expensive, high end bearings. I'm not too sure of the QA level a $40 bearing is going to get vs the $10k one.

For example, it may not have had any physically observable imperfection but could have been very slightly out of balance. Would have caused a very small but localized vibration which would take it a while to self destruct down the road. Have to weigh and ensure the bearings are properly balanced as well. Not all factory imperfections will show themselves within the first 1k miles. The only real way to tell how the failure occurred is to send the whole engine/transmission to Kawasaki or forensics engineer and have them test the metallurgy of all of the pieces and put everything under a microscope and a lot of NDI sessions.
 
#32 ·
My bike went off at once and now when I turn sounds very ugly and when I try to accelerate goes, it sounds like something has broken inside: /
My warranty ended in April, has only 21,000 kilometers, kawasaki do something about it? is there any official word on this?
an hour ago did this happen, and here I am from Uruguay Kawasaki service is bad ..
 
#36 ·
I agree with what Rogue said. However, personally, I wouldn't let a shop open it up to verify the rod is broken. If its knocking then its 95% a broken rod. Most likely a shop will charge you a couple hundred to check what you already know the problem is. Put that money towards a eBay engine.
 
#38 ·
just for giggles.... was this bike made in Thailand or japan?
 
#40 ·
non abs models seem to be mostly from Thailand...when I bought my bike it was a crap shoot...some of the stem tags said made in Thailand..some said Japan ....i went with Japan ..kinda weird...mine is candy lime..abs..2014
 
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