Marauder GZ 125 siezing/****ed

dbs_sailor

Hello!

I've just walked in from pushing my Marauder home. I've been having some trouble with it lately...

Long version:
I got the thing 2nd hand. It's a 2000 Marauder and it was in great condition with 8k miles on the clock. Previous owner kept it mostly in a garage and took it out occasionally. Great first bike.

So.. I've owned the bike around 5/6 months, and Dad thinks the engine sounds horrible. He's hearing a knock in the engine. He knows his stuff. I don't. So we go at the tappets. Little bit better, but the engine still sounds dreadful, Dad says.

Then I remember earlier on, when I'd had the bike around 2 months, a screw had flown out of the cylinder. I hadn't noticed it go, but I noticed I had a leg full of oil or petrol or some ****. I didn't notice it that much because it was pissing rain a lot at the time. 2 or 3 days after the first legfull and it's not raining and there's DEFINATELY a leg full of oil or petrol or whatever the ****. So I have a gander at the cylinder and sure enough there's an obvious source. I plug up this hole in my cylinder and drive to my parents, bang a screw in it and forget about it. My excuse? I was incredibly busy at the time.

Anyhow, later on when I'm having the noise issues, I get a guy to listen to it tick over. He freaks. "That's not right." He tells me all about the little screw in my cylinder that went missing and its function. Apparently it was playing a part in regulating the tension of the cam chain. Grand.

So we take apart the cylinder, the cam chain is LOOSE, we get a lathe and fix a bolt so it goes through the cylinder onto the other side and holds up a piece inside that regulates the tension of that chain! Cool. Except I take the thing out for a run the next day and it siezes. Now we'd sealed up the cylinder so there were no leaks... Again... I neglected to mention to my Dad the volume of the liquid that came out of the cylinder. I honestly thought it wasn't relevant because I was entirely by the oil gauge at the side of the bike that said it was full.

Father did some **** with the tension and squirted oil in at the spark plug side. Bike runs again like there's no problem... But only for one day. Until just there.... Then when I'm walking the bike home I start to wonder if I haven't entirely ****ed my engine by not refilling the oil over the past few months.

Short Version:

I have been running a bike for a matter of 4/5 months without a decent amount of oil in it. Why? Because a bolt on the cylinder flew off one day and oil seeped out for at least 2/3 days... Or roughly 6 or 7 miles.

Anyhow... Like I said this was my first bike... And I didn't connect the dots. In fact I initially thought it was petrol spraying out of the hole in the cylinder because the petrol line is near enough to the screw hole. ****.

So... Is the bike ****ed? My Dad is expecting to pull it apart with me in 2 weeks and see a knackered engine. He says the knock sounds like it's coming from the "big end" and I feel like an utter, total, complete, absolute ****ing eejit for running a perfectly good bargain of a bike into the ground because I didn't regularly maintain it.

Holy crap.

Do I get on the phone to city spares looking for a new engine? Is it worth dropping the bike in somewhere? Do I give it two weeks till Daddy get's home and rip the yoke apart looking to see how bad it is?

I'm prepared for any abuse you're willing to give me. If this is 100% because of oil leaking out over those few days, I'll be utterly ashamed of myself.

Thanks,

Conan

seanybiker

ha ha . Not putting oil back into is was not a good idea alright lol. May aswell wait for your da to pull her apart and keep your fingers crossed. Best me luck

slapper

eh ya bikes need oil

lol lol

Oryx

Those small engines take a small amount of oil, about a litre in total. If you didnt replace what was lost, your engine was probably running a bit dry and did the damage.

You wont know till its apart, but Id assume it didnt help much.

jim o doom

The engine might be repairable - I had a marauder 125 10 years ago, and managed to completely fook the engine - drove the piston through the head I believe, through similar stupidity to yourself. These things can happen to people who don't understand what they have, or in my case were misinformed by a gobsh!te of a mechanic.
The engine of my old marauder was repaired by a mates da who bought the yoke off me to fix & sell. Those marauder engines really are pretty damn weak, and it's not the first story I have heard of them being a pain.I had about 4 suzukis, a marauder, 2 gs500es & thena 600 bandit, now I'm with kawasaki and I will never drive a suzuki again - bandit was good for getting around & had few enough problems, but everything else was a pain.
pSo; it could be fixable - as I destroyed an engine pretty bad and they got it working again, but I wouldn't place any money on it unless your da is a serious genius with bikes!

seamus

Managed to screw up a Marauder myself. Damn thing never leaked oil, but seemed to burn it off at a ridiculous rate. I was using about a litre of oil a month just topping the thing up. Asked a number of times at a couple of garages and they said it was normal enough, especially if you were running it at higher revs for extended periods (which I was).

Twas my first bike and I was a bit lax about the whole thing, and one day I managed to run it dry. It seized up. I managed to get it started again, get to garage and fill it up with oil, but the damage was done. Bought a new bike a few weeks later and gave it a once-over at least once a week.

I'm a perfect example of why your first major anything should be fairly cheap and cheerful, so when you screw it up, you won't be so devastated.