Upgrade to enjoy this feature!
Vital MX fantasy is free to play, but paid users have great benefits. Paid member benefits:
- View and download rider stats
- Pick trends
- Create a private league
- And more!
Only $10 for all 2024 SX, MX, and SMX series (regularly $30).
Hot Rods and the rest of the companies within Arrowhead Powersports pride ourselves on the quality of our products. Making sure that we are producing the best and most reliable product we can is definitely the most important aspect within our manufacturing processes. Without going into great detail, I can assure you that we take great steps to ensure that we are producing the best possible products we can. We invest a large sum of money into high tech, precision equipment to help us achieve that goal. All of our products undergo very detailed and stringent manufacturing and quality assurance processes. Those processes and our products are constantly reviewed to ensure we are using the most effective and up to date methods of manufacturing and quality inspection.
JMX82, please contact us at support@pivotworks.com so that we can discuss this matter.
The Shop
As I recall, Yamaha had a valve issue some years ago in their 250F's, and Honda had bad cranks in the 95 CR250's.
I believe they stood behind their products as well. If it's mechanical, it can fail. Just seem to hear a lot of bad stories on bad Hot Rods cranks. Maybe the OP will get some help with his situation.
A bad crank is how I came to own my '07 450 Zook. Previous owner rebuilt the motor, because he wanted to. Put a Wiseco crank in it, it locked up with less than an hour in it, I believe. Wiseco refused to do anything for him. Think you can put him down as a former customer, he was so mad he went out and bought another bike.
I mean welcome!
The four stroke photos in this thread, those guys are screwed and done riding forever.
The two stroke photos, I've read on here how when a two stroke blows up it only costs you $173 to fix it and it can be done in 32 minutes. All is good.
Throw in a top end on your 2 stroke for about $200.00 or less. Need to do the 4 stroke?....hope you're doing more than just the piston and rings....you're gonna need it.
Pit Row
I could be wrong on that.
Last year I put a new OEM crank in a Kawasaki. The crank was dead on.
Against my advice, a buddy bought a hot rods crank for his bike. It was way off out the box. They just don't match OEM in quality and tolerances.
I also tried one of their fork overhaul kits.. Junk! Avoid if you can is my advice.
Rebuilding was cheaper than parting out or buying a new engine.
Even the blown engine was fixed for less than 1500 USD, found a case on ebay for less than 200$.
The 1500 $ included a Hinson clutch (slighlty used) as well.
I used a crankshaft and Cylinder/Piston from Hot-Rods, Pivot Works and Vertex. So far no issues and everything looks fine.
When i bought those 2 bikes they where blown already.
What was interesting both engines had the same failure. KXF and CRF
Broken Con Rod and broken Cylinder almost on the same place.
I have now idea how the previous owner used and serviced the bikes.
Based on what i found it might not be perfectly serviced.
However it is interesting that the Con Rod seems to break at the same area even here with the 2 stroke.
When i looked at my pictures from the broken Con Rod it looked like that a crack in the Con Rod was there a long time.
I bought a couple CR125's (05' and 07') over the past year or two. Both had Hot Rods in them. They have since been replaced with OEM because I rebuilt both engines/transmissions. Both Hot Rods cranks were in good shape/spec'd good and the bikes ran fine prior to the rebuilds. I just replaced them due to unknown hours.
I agree that installation is crucial. I rig up simple setups to mimic the Honda service manual technique so I only exert pressure on the inner crank bearing race during installation, etc. Also, the crank bearing seals can be driven in too far and the crank bearings can be starved of premix and burn them up. I use a large washer that is larger than the seal recess for the final seating.
Yes, 2-strokes are simple, but a lot can go wrong if not careful.
I've used Hot Rods crank bearings, but figured those were outsourced by someone else.
After parts reached US C&E Holdings headquarters their engineers started to evaluating them. They came to conclusion that my piston has had a light contact to cylinder head and eventually that caused crankshaft to break. I should have checked squish clearance when I rebuilt the engine to prevent that from happening.
As a good will gesture they sent me a full Wrench Rabbit rebuild kit for my bike and it arrived here on Friday.
I can't thank enough Steve to taking interest on my case and providing me Wrench Rabbit kit for rebuilding the engine. After this experience I'm pretty confident about using their products in the future rebuilds.
I will be starting topic about rebuilding the bike in the Bike Builds section once I have found good set of engine cases and cylinder
Post a reply to: Hot Rods Crankshaft Catastrophic Failure (KTM 150 SX 2013)