Well my base gaskets have been leaking again. Scrutineering at Snetterton race told me to have it sorted by Oulton round so its cylinders off time again Only had 2 hours at it yesterday afternoon before the pub called us but managed to get the bike stripped down and engine tipped forward to get at the rear cylinder. (its pivoted on the engine mount below the swing arm mount) I was going to remove the engine but doing it this way mean I can leave things like the oil lines, clutch and a few wires attached and save myself a bit of time. Thats the hope anyway.

Before





Half stripped





Engine pivoted



Will try and improve the pic quality today and photograph every stage. Wish me luck!

Wowsers... that's all got to go back together !!!!

enjoy mate.

That's not going to be easy doing the job with the motor still in the frame.
I've done this job a few times (!) and I didn't even try consider doing it in situ as it were.
If you've not done the job before it's important to know that the pistons have to be on the con rods (and con rods attached) before putting the barrels back on which means that conventional ring compressors don't work.
Also, with the barrels off it might be a good time to replace the original studs with the thicker, later ones if you are running the waisted versions. BTW: buy KTM there are some rubbish ones about that have been over hardened.
Wish you the joy of it - do keep us posted!

Wow ! the things we go through for the THRILLS

Full write up is going to have to wait till its finished I'm afraid. Too knackered to do a half arsed attempt. Took nearly 100 pics today alone! Although some are duplicates, out of focus ect but wanted to show every step. Was a bit of a cockup after fitting rear timing chain and putting that side (clutch side) all back together only to realise when I got the front stripped down that the balancer weight on that end of the balancer shaft is fixed and so i now have to take all the rear side off again to slide the shaft out to replace the front timing chain

not for an individual job like this no. Repair manual only disassemble the engine, services parts and puts the whole engine back together again. There is a walkthrough on ADVrider but its on a old 950 Adv and several parts have been updated since. Its missing quite a few pics as well. It has been useful but not comprehensive enough. Without my buddy there to get me out of the shite a couple of times I would have been stuck. This is what I want to try and avoid with this one. Hopefully I can.

Ok here is the walkthrough. Going to make it into a PDF. If anyone can think of a step I've missed let me know and I'll add it. Missing a couple of pics which I will source.



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I’m going to try and walk through base and head gasket change with timing chains replacement on the 990 LC8 engine. Mine is in a Superduke 06 with 50220 fairly hard miles on the clock. Mods are heads ported and polished at 42k miles, Motobox and full titanium Akra system.

Reason for doing this is the basegaskets are leaking (again) so I’m going to use some Wellseal this time after cleaning everything up and over torque the heads down to 44nm instead of 38. If they leak again she’s in the bin! While in there it was recommended to change the timing chains. Not something I’ve ever attempted before on any engine so pretty scary for me. I am using a walkthrough from http://www.ktm.950info called Camchain R&R http://ktm950.info/how/Orange%20Garage/ ... chain.html but it’s on a 950 and some parts have changed since then. Also not as in depth that a noob like me could use it on my own. I did the work at a m8s workshop. He owns a 950 Adv and has changed his timing chains so knows the engine and can help me out when I venture into the unknown. Also has a bike bench and a few tools I don’t own yet that will be required.

Here she is looking a bit sorry for herself. Oil leaking for both base gaskets and recently been raced so covered in it. Crap everywhere. Hopefully looking better soon.





Get everything off the bike . Disconnected the oil tank by removing pipe below the feed valve so didn’t lose any oil out of the tank. It’s only 2 trackdays and a 1.5 hour race old so a bit more in it yet.






Plan orignally was to take the engine out and work on the bench but decided to leave the engine in the frame and pivot it forward at the lowest engine bolt. Having it in the frame give me something to lever against with some of the larger torqued nuts.




All the bits required to do the job.



Head and base gaskets



Gudgeon pin retaining clips



Timing chains



So into it. Remove the speak plugs so you can turn the engine over by hand. You do this by removing the plug in the centre of the ignition casing and using a large hex/ allen socket and tuning anticlockwise. We want to get TDC for front cylinder first and remove the cams. It’s the rear cylinder coming off first and rear timing chain being removed first but you need the front cams out to be able to remove the rear timing chain. I’ll expain why when I get to that point. I only know this as I didn’t remove the cams and ran into this problem. Ended up having to remove the front cam bridge when the piston was not at TDC. Valves were partially open so there was pressure on the bridge from cams. Took 10 mins are undoing bolts half a turn each cross ways across the bridge to avoid breaking it. You don’t want to break the cam bridge! It’s machined and matched at manufacture with the head. Breaking it will prove very expensive!



Front cylinder at TDC. Dots lined up and lobes facing outwards. Remove the bridge and the cams. I’m missing this pic as I didn’t remove them at this point.

(pic required!!!)

Remove the rear cam cover and keep turning the engine anticlockwise until the 2 dots line up to show the rear at TDC. Lobes face in and lock the engine with the engine locking bolt inserted in clutch side. You might want to check valve clearances at this point. I did mine a month ago so didn’t do them again.





Engine locking bolt



Remove the cam bridge and lift out the cams. Now remove the cam chain tensioner. Remove the plug and then I use a magnet to slide the actual tensioner out. If it comes out in 2 bits its fooked and will have to be replaced. Mine were replaced 8k miles ago and are thankfully fine.





Next remove the double timing gear needle bearing bolt.



With a hooked piece of wire or similar lift the timing chain over the double gear and it will sit on a small shelf on the inside and remove the gear.







Now you have access to the 2 internal cylinder bolts. Remove the nuts. Be careful as you really down’t want to drop one of these down the timing chain channel and into the guts of the engine. Everything has a coating of oil and so is slippy. I use a magnet again. There is also a washer under the nut so don’t forget about that. It may come out with nut or you can remove it once you have the cylinder off the bike. Also remove the 2 external nuts.



Now remove the chain guide. 8mm bolt and the outide and lift the guide out through the top.







At this point I put the cams back in and secured with a 4 bolts into the bridge. This is to stop the shim buckets falling out later. I’m not having the valves out so no need to remove the buckets. One less thing to have to put back and mixing up th ebuckets and shims is exactly the kind of thing I’d do.


The cylinder can be lifted up. A wobble from side to side breaks the gasket seal and gently lift the cylinder until the top of the con rod becomes visable. You want to leave the piston in the cylinder for now. If you want to inspect and measure ring gaps you can do this later. You will see the gudgeon pin come into view. You remove it from the opposite side to the timing chain. You can see the rings so don’t go any further or they will pop out. I fill the open engine with clean rags so you can’t drop anything in there. The clip holding the gudgeon pin in will love nothing more than to fly out as you remove it and drop into the guts of the engine. This could be bad. With the clip removed you can just ease the pin out by using your finger from the oppostite side. With the pin out the cylinder will just lift off.








You can see here the marks in the engine casings that is not helping with oil leaks. I’m going to use very fine wet and dry and WD40 to remove as much of these as possible. They aren’t deep and I’m only using very gentle pressure. Remove the cylinder bolts and dowle pins and starter motor to make this easier.




















Nothing now in the way so removing marks in engine casing and cleaning it up.





Now take the head and and bore apart. They are held together with 3 allen bolts.








These were cleaned up 8k miles ago when I had heads ported and polished. Some carbon build up. I won’t be removing it as it can only help with compression huh

Now a small gear puller to remove the gear.



Ok that’s everyting done for the rear cylinder. Time to move onto the front.

Unlock the engine again and turn it anticlockwise through 360 + 70 degrees and it’s at TDC for the front. You can see through the hole from the locking bolt a small indent in the when the bike is at TDC. Look for this if you are unsure. Although it’s not critical as the engine is rebuilt from the rear cylinder and there are marking to show when you are at this.

Follow the steps for rear cylinder to remove the front. Cam chain tensioner, double timing gear, chain guide and then lift cylinder, remove gudgeon pin and slide off cylinder and strip and clean. Front cylinder had more pronaunced honing still visable



Remove the ignition cover. You’ll need to remove the fly wheel. I didn’t have a fly wheel puller so used a 20mm thread bolt and an impact gun and it comes straight off. Then remove the freewheel behind it



Next remove the idler gear on the end of the balancer shaft.



You can use a rubber mallet to tap the balancer shaft through from the clutch side. Once it’s out you can swap the timing chains and place it back in.







Back on with the idle gear and freewheel gear and finally the flywheel. This needs to be torqued up to 150nm.







Ok that’s the ignition side complete. You need to unlock the engine and turn it anticlockwise to rear TDC and past it to get timing back to where you had it when gears were removed. You can see its there by lining up the ignition sensor and gear that was photographed when the engine was advanced to let the gears come off.



Lock the engine again and fit the new timing chain and its gear. Tap the woodruff pins back in.



Refit the balancer weight. Its keyed so you can’t get it wrong. Tap in with a socket



Then the first of the 2 gears, again this is keyed to the Woodruff key so you can’t go wrong.



Next is the outer gear. Its important you line this up proberly with the first geat or the weight will be in the wrong place and engine will be unblanced. Use the tipex marks to get the correct position.





Getting the spring loaded clip back in position is a bitch. You need to line it up with the outer gear and then put it in place. Add the washers in the correct order and then the nut with 243 and tighten to the point you can still just move the clip with circlip pliers. I found it needed the help of a screw driver pushing it into correct position to get it home. Tighten nut to 120nm.





You can now safetly unlock the engine and turn it back a few degrees to TDC on the gears. Lock it off again and its time to rebuild the rear cylinder. You can refit the starter motor at this point as well.

Rebuilding the rear is simply a reverse of the strip. Refit the studs to bolt the cylinder/head down and the dowl pins. Bolt the head back to the cylinder with a new gasket. I then used the wellseal on the engine casing and placed gasket in place. Lower the cylinder down,feed the cam chain lower guide into the channel and feed the conrod into the piston. Slide in the gudgeon pin. Now comes the bitch. Getting the retaining pin or as I named it the Jesus fooking Christ! pin as it flew across the workshop for the 3rd time. I warn you it’s a biatch! Keep those rags in the engine casing or you can bet the thing will fly in there and then you are going to have to try and retrieve it. When it is finally in place lower the head all the way down. Refit the main nuts and tighten in 2 stages. First to 20nm and then to 38. I went to 45 as those bitches ain’t leaking again!! I then poured 1ltr of oil down the timing chain channel. Its around what was lost when I removed the sump plug. Refit the upper chain guide. Next comes the double timing gear and its needle bearing bolt to 30nm. Cam chain adjuster next and tighten to 20nm. Finally the cams go back in in the correct postions . Bolt down the bridge. Tighten larger bolts and smaller to 10nm and then the larger bolts to 18nm. You can fit the cam cover and move on to the front cylinder. Unlock the engine bolt and turn the engine anti clockwise 360 + 70 degrees. Lock it off and fit the cylinder following same procdure for rear.
With that done you can unlock the engine and refit the ignition and clutch side engine covers. If you want to play it safe, before you fit the spark plugs you can turn the engine over by hand to make sure nothing fouls. If you have followed all the steps and taken your time it should be fine. Better to be safe than sorry though. If its all good fit the plugs.

Then its just a matter of fitting everything back on the bike. Fill the coolant system and raise the front of the bike to 40 degrees. Then fire her up! Once the engine hits 4 bars (on 05/06 dash) the thermostat opens and water from rad gets drawn into the engine. Top up until no more bubbles and fit rad cap.




Now go out and ride and enjoy!.

Has anyone ever used teflon buttons to replace the clips for the connecting rod pins? Used them in air cooled vw turbo engines as insurance against a slipped out/broken clip.

Damn !!! Looks like KTM made it easy to replace timing chains ......

best of luck for a successful outcome -------- why base gaskets leaking anyhow's ??? any idea ?

Nice work Klinky. Is it all back together? Fingers crossed last time you do this.

Truly epic post!

Nice to see this post and the detail. Thanks for posting Craig, hopefully I'll never need it!

Great write up...needs to be a sticky

I do not have access to workshop...or..... the time......(or skill sets ....so it will be in great hands

Great write up and good job! I never took it appart that far but I'm surprised to see that so much needs done just to do the chains.
Funny it leaks at the base too, the way the cylinder bore goes in the crank case normally means that seals pretty much by itself.
I've seen engines where that fits tight and they only have some sealer there and no gasket and no leaks at all.

How tight is the cylinder bore in the crank case Craig?

Nice write up Craig. Certainly good for getting me back to sleep at three in the morning cos the kids all woke me up!

Nice write up Craig

JohnJJr wrote:Damn !!! Looks like KTM made it easy to replace timing chains ......

best of luck for a successful outcome -------- why base gaskets leaking anyhow's ??? any idea ?


"Cylinder studs stretch after a while and allow oil to escape past the base gaskets."

Early 950 LC8's were lacking cylinder stud washers and did not get correct tork settings at install which also which beavered out the base mating surfaces . They fixed that, added washer to newer builds I am told, but it's still a weak design of the LC8. Know issue for the KTM 950 Adventure bikes. Happened to a bud bike. But he rides hard. Grew up flat trackin'.
If left unattended the loose head vibrates and removes material from the mating surfaces. Col K was lucky. Check out ADVrider.com. Look for the Orange Crush section.

I have a suggestion for engine rebuilds like this. If you look in the service manual you will see an engine stand which is easy to fab if you have the means. It supports the engine and the frame can be removed with ease. I replaced my bent frame with an engine stand I made. I was able to keep the FI bodies and all the wiring in place and pivoted the frame off myself. The motor then can be moved and be built on your work bench.

For those with slight weeps maybe torquing the heads down a bit more might stop it in its tracks. It's not a major job to remove the cams to get at the 2 internal head nuts. I over torqued mine to 44nm. Got to be worth a shot. If it doesn't work then replace the base gaskets.

I didn't need to turn the engine away from TDC to get the spreader drive off of the balance shaft (tipex step in klincks instructions), undoing the circlip and taking the two parts off individually lets you tilt them forward.

If you have the top cam chain sprocket out you can loosen the chain away from the bottom sprocket, then spin the balance weight around to pull that off with just your fingers.

I need to do base gaskets on mine 06 model, It's only got 7000 miles on it but that does include about 20 trackdays. Only the rear leaking but figure I may as well do both while I'm dicking around.


Can someone in the know please give me a list of what parts I will need, part numbers would be nice too but I'm just being lazy really !

If the front isn't leaking I wouldn't touch it. Maybe over torque the heads down a bit but other than that leave it alone.

You'll need
1x base gasket
1x head gasket
1x gudgeon pin retaining clip. Lol you'll have fun fitting that biatch. Fill the engine with rags as you don't want to drop it in the there!!
Personally I'd change the cam chain tensioner. You could just measure to see if its still in spec though.
1x set of cam cover gaskets
Personally I just heat my crush washers and reuse them but if you want new only the cam chain tensioner uses one, plus the usual oil change ones.

Thanks Clinck

Do I not need head bolts, car ones are mostly single use??

Yeah I'd change them. They upgraded them on later bikes and they are pretty cheap too.

I believe there is an upgrade to the studs too...in response to the earlier studs stretching.... Got to be on the parts list to try and avoid doing it twice.

Klinck, is 60036003000 the part number for the cam chain tensioner on the rear cylinder head?

If it falls to bits it's no good. You can also measure it. The process is explained in the workshop manual. Other than that no just screw it back in and torque it up to required amount.