Smoking G14

[dcjok]

My 95 was smoking when I first started it which quickly advanced to smoking all the time but, it still runs good. I removed the head and found a small amount of oil on top of the piston. (normal?) Valves have carbon on them. Could this be a valve guide problem or is it deeper?

[Honorstick]

If it is not overfilled with oil I would say your oil ring wore out. It may be possible to put new rings in it if the bore is in good shape or else you may have to bore and go oversize.
Hope this helps.

[dcjok]

That's what I was afraid I would hear. Cleaned up the head, exhaust valve looks pretty bad. Would it be a waste of time and money to replace valves and seals and put it back together? Getting any deeper goes beyond my abilities.

[rlester]

You definitely should do the rings, I guarantee you that is the problem. I had the same problem with my G14. Lots of smoke, drove me crazy. The rings and gaskets were pretty cheap if I remember correctly, and I don't regret doing that work at all. When I took all the cooling shroud off the engine, the fins were clogged up with dirt and grass. It was probably overheating a fair bit, yours is probably the same.

Not a hint of smoke now, and a year later, it doesn't use any oil either.

[sho305]

Its not that hard to put rings in if it runs good now and compression is not that low. Oil ring usually first thing to go on yamaha and comp rings are still working so you get what you have. Best you can do without boring (which will give you like new performance) is pull the piston/rod and crank, run a hone down it, put new rings on, bolt it back up. Lap the valves in replace if needed, seals, clean the carbon off everything, should be good to go with not that big a parts bill. You can find out how to do all this stuff on here or the net, all you really need are the torque specs, or find a manual some you can download here. If you bore you have to find a place that can bore an angle cylinder like that, then new piston, otherwise the same. I would recommend if you plan to keep the cart for long time and keep it stock. I don't know if you can deck the head a little for more power on those but now would be the time to do that stuff, maybe shim the springs a little if you run with no governor. Not done one of those but I can have the engine out of my G9 in 15 min or so, strip the stuff off it in about that long. Except when mine smoked I bought a clone engine and put that in, should rebuild my stock engine and sell it. Of course that was a far larger project to drop the clone in and get everything all hooked up.