2008 GS SM5 - Engine, oil pump, & clutch Troubles - Need Advice?

Hi all - new to the board and need some help. I picked up an 08' Spyder GS SM5 from a guy a couple of weeks ago at a very cheap price. He was the original owner, and it had around 8000 miles on it. He took it in for regular maintenance back in January to his local dealer, and they replaced all the tires, brakes, hoses and the oil pump.

He picked it up and rode about 1/2 mile before the oil line to the oil cooler flew off, oil sprayed everywhere and he shut it down. He had it towed back to the dealership and their diagnosis to him was "You have metal shavings in the oil - the motor is shot - you need a new one - $10K."

He sold it to me cheap as a project, and I'm now digging into it. I won't get into the fact that if it happened to me, I would have gone right back and make all sorts of accusations against them.

Anyway - fast forward to now - I've been troubleshooting and here's what I've done (in order) and found:

- Topped off the oil, reattached the hose, checked in the spark plug holes to see what I could see (everything in there looked good - nice and clean - no scoring or damage).
- Started the engine, and almost immediately the hose blew off.
- Drained out the oil, pulled the oil tank and oil cooler. Tank was fine - Oil cooler was almost completely blocked. Knowing it was probably toast, I put some water through it and all that came out for a long time was sludge.
- Non magnetic shavings in the oil - very fine, almost powder like.
- Ordered a new (used oil cooler), but in the mean time as a test, I reinstalled the oil tank, bypassed the oil cooler, refilled the oil and added some oil flush/cleaner.
- Fired it up and it idles great - no issues. Ran it for about 10 minutes, shut it down, drained the oil and had a lot of crud in there (including the powder looking non-magnetic stuff).
- Refilled the oil, fired it up, and it idled great again for a few minutes (until it warmed up) and then started to make a little bit of a strange noise so I shut it down.

Research told me that maybe the clutch plates were bad and since some portions of that are not magnetic, I pulled the clutch cover and all of the disks out. This is where it gets interesting. The clutch plates were shot - pictures attached, but they are in rough shape. There was a lot of debris in there, all along the outer perimeter of the clutch housing.

I've ordered a socket so that I can pull the wheel and housing off - want to see what's going on behind there before I decide what's up, but I'm thinking that the clutch basically was shot, debris started going through the oil and clogged the oil cooler. I also want to see the condition of the new oil pump.

I'm suspecting that the dealer did not actually replace the oil pump - if they had, wouldn't they have had to pull the clutch housing off and also pull the plates? Seems like they would have told the PO about the clutch and replaced things at that time.

Anyway - just posting to see what people think, gather opinions and take it from there. I'm hoping the motor is still good and this crud hasn't ruined the whole thing.

I'm also very open to opinions if I'm heading down the wrong path.

Thanks - Tom

IMHO that guy got ...SCAMMED .... big time, if he lost an oil line connection that oil would be coming ...OUT ... not in ... Check the filter thoroughly ( like take it apart ) that will confirm contamination .... Change Oil anyway ( it's cheap ) ....Replace OIL PUMP ????? , I put that one in the SCAMMED category also. .... good luck .... keep us in the loop .... Mike :thumbup:

Interesting. One thing that comes to mind is that when the PO brought it in, was he having any issues with the clutch? I would think something had to be going on that he was ok with replacing an oil pump. 8K isn't many miles, even on a early 2 cyl rotax.

If there is that much crud in the lower part of the motor, there may be a good bit on top end too. If you get all the parts replaced and it runs ok, I would keep an eye on the oil quality and make sure there isnt any more settling out. That may take several oil changes to accomplish that. I'm not sure if it is still a thing, but car dealerships used to offer a service that pushed a cleaning fluid through a motor to clean out all the crud. I always thought it was a bit of a scam, but who knows? Something like that might actually be useful if it could be done on your motor.

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Originally Posted by Eviltwin

Interesting. One thing that comes to mind is that when the PO brought it in, was he having any issues with the clutch? I would think something had to be going on that he was ok with replacing an oil pump. 8K isn't many miles, even on a early 2 cyl rotax.

If there is that much crud in the lower part of the motor, there may be a good bit on top end too. If you get all the parts replaced and it runs ok, I would keep an eye on the oil quality and make sure there isnt any more settling out. That may take several oil changes to accomplish that. I'm not sure if it is still a thing, but car dealerships used to offer a service that pushed a cleaning fluid through a motor to clean out all the crud. I always thought it was a bit of a scam, but who knows? Something like that might actually be useful if it could be done on your motor.

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I asked him why he had the oil pump replaced, and he said that the dealer told him the hoses were getting old and needed replacing, and that he should do the pump at the same time. I do plan to run some of the oil flush through once I get it all back together, just to see if I can get the crud out.

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Originally Posted by BLUEKNIGHT911

IMHO that guy got ...SCAMMED .... big time, if he lost an oil line connection that oil would be coming ...OUT ... not in ... Check the filter thoroughly ( like take it apart ) that will confirm contamination .... Change Oil anyway ( it's cheap ) ....Replace OIL PUMP ????? , I put that one in the SCAMMED category also. .... good luck .... keep us in the loop .... Mike :thumbup:

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I agree - I had to say it, because I hate seeing people get taken advantage of, but there's no way that they changed the pump - as I'm taking it apart, you can tell that those bolts have never been taken off and I can't see any reason they would ignore the clutch and put it back the way it was.

Pulled all the guts out of the clutch, sealed it up, new oil - runs great. I’m going to replace everything in the clutch and oil pump and cross my fingers.

For anybody interested, the bike is fixed and back on the road. The long story short was that the clutch was bad and had started to break down (the non-magnetic portion). It filled the engine with a very fine powder that clogged the oil cooler and caused the blowback.

I replaced the oil cooler, ran 4 rounds of oil flush through the engine, replaced the clutch and so far it's running great. I'll put 100 or so miles on it and do another oil change to see how it looks, but I'm confident that it's good to go.

Bewdy tpc! :thumbup:

So many come along and ask questions, then we never hear the result... so it's a refreshing change to actually hear of a successful outcome, even if there wasn't a great deal of help we could offer :opps: But it's great to hear you got it sorted and it's good to go now! :ohyea:

Congrats! :cheers:

My attitude (for all forums that I have belonged to over the years) is that if I ask a question, post the results. It helps to then build a knowledge base for the next person to use.

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Originally Posted by tpc66

My attitude (for all forums that I have belonged to over the years) is that if I ask a question, post the results. It helps to then build a knowledge base for the next person to use.

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Same thing here...

And thanks for letting us all know what was going one. Glad you got it up and running.

Tim

IF your are up for the difficulty of the discontinued engine & parts :2thumbs: :popcorn: & would like to know what the powder stuff is, maybe send a oil sample out for testing :dontknow: I did have a similar oil pump fail; tech advised clutches got too hot from multiple reasons. However, not powder but something else...







& yes, plastic parts... either the pump itself, or related :dontknow: in hot oil :sour:

Hi Tom, I was just reviewing your post. I hope your spyder is still running. Just to add my thought about why the clutch failed. My guess would be that it had the wrong oil in it and then sat for long time. It's common knowledge that oils with additives can destroy clutch plates. Just keep changing oil frequently and hopefully all the fines clear out without doing any real damage to other internals.

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Originally Posted by TeeJay

Hi Tom, I was just reviewing your post. I hope your spyder is still running. Just to add my thought about why the clutch failed. My guess would be that it had the wrong oil in it and then sat for long time. It's common knowledge that oils with additives can destroy clutch plates. Just keep changing oil frequently and hopefully all the fines clear out without doing any real damage to other internals.

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I'm not understanding how the oil cooler got clogged.
It has to be located after the filter system, so that would tell me no filter or a perforated oil filter for a period of time.

The myth of oil additives destroying clutch plates keeps getting parroted and spread.
What additives are you referring to, and how do you determine it ruins clutch plates?
What damage can occur from an engine that has the "wrong" oil but sets idle?

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Originally Posted by carbonation

I'm not understanding how the oil cooler got clogged.
It has to be located after the filter system, so that would tell me no filter or a perforated oil filter for a period of time.

The myth of oil additives destroying clutch plates keeps getting parroted and spread.
What additives are you referring to, and how do you determine it ruins clutch plates?
What damage can occur from an engine that has the "wrong" oil but sets idle?

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There are a few possibilities here.

On the original Spyders, up until late 2012, the filters supplied by BRP were of such poor quality materials and construction. That if left in the bike too long, the filter medium would disintegrate and clog up everything downstream. This would account for the oil cooler being clogged by 'Non-Metallic' crud. BRP started having so many engines to replace on warranty that they pulled all filters off the shelves in September of 2012. Destroyed them. Would not let dealers sell anything they had on the showroom floor until they got the new filters which were not available until late November early December that year. It was a mess.

Of course HiFlo and other aftermarket filters had been available for the Spyder for years as BRP had used off the shelf dimensions which were already used by several other machines. But when they redesigned the SE HCM filter, they reinvented the wheel for no functional reason. This is why the only machine on the planet that uses the current 'Extended' HCM filter is the 998 SE5 Spyder. Which has been out of production since 2017. There was no reason to make a bigger filter as the original flowed all the oil needed by the HCM.

Oil additives are a bad idea in any wet clutch machine. But even more so with the 998 Spyder as that clutch is very oil sensitive. Use the correct oil and that clutch will last the life of the Spyder. Use the wrong oil in a 998 and you're going to get slippage in short order. Most additives are designed to make the oil slipperier. You don't want that in a wet clutch engine. Though he amount of time it sits idle could be deadly with the original BRP oil filters, it has little to do with the destruction of the clutch friction plates because that comes from them slipping, not from being eaten or degraded by the oil or additives.

There is no need to worry about how long a well made oil filter sits in the vehicle. So, with the death of the original BRP filters, and the quality of the aftermarket products, this problem no longer exists.

Hope this helps.