Blown head gasket on my 93' suzuki dr650

Question

Hi everyone,

I'm fixing a blown head gasket on my 93' suzuki dr650. When I removed the camshaft, I noticed a good bit of wear on where the end of the camshaft sits. There are some rough spots from where I'm assuming the camshaft has worn down the spot it is sitting in. I was wondering what the best course of action would be for cleaning this up, aside from new cams, cylinder head. I don't have the tools to measure the runout but I'm assuming that's all that this is. This bike has 40k miles and I'd rather not do an entire rebuild on the top half. Would it be fine to sand the rough spots (just to remove the burs and edges) and put things back together?

Answer 1

Oh wow, that looks pretty worn down. It might be worth your time to get some plastigauge and see what your clearance is. It almost looks like it started wearing down into the bearing area?

Comments

Definitely worn into the bearing area. I guess I know the proper answer is to get a new camshaft and cylinder head housing since the bearings are worn and the camshaft is more than likely way past the maximum runout.

The bike runs decently once it gets warmed up. So my next question is what would be the consequences of leaving it in the state it's in? Just the valves not opening all the way since the valves should be able to close all the way even if the cam is worn out, right?