Defective GS650GX piston (poor QC) - which got me into Kats!

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Uncle Bob
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Defective GS650GX piston (poor QC) - which got me into Kats!

Post by Uncle Bob » Fri Jul 05, 2013 8:30 pm

Back in about 1986/87 while at college and zipping around on my RD200 I worked at a mates bike breakers in Oulton Broad, Lowestoft. (well I say worked, I never got paid anything but I did get to muck about with bikes which was nice...)

Anyway, he got a call to pick up a bike that had had an engine failure and the owner had stripped down the engine found the fault and given up, so it was to be scrapped.

That was my first Katana encounter and it was a GS650GX or (GZ) and I was taken by the Katana bug. I still remember where it was - from a farmers barn near Frostenden in Suffolk.

The bike chassis was pretty good nick (as only a few years old) but the engine had blown, which was found to be a poor casting on one of the pistons, so the circlip didn't stay put and hence neither did the gudgeon pin! I'm guessing anymore like this will have been fixed by now but here are some images of that piston, which I still have -

...It was the piston, from the Katana that started it all off for me!

First the good side:
GS650GX-piston-good-side.jpg
Now the bad side:
GS650GX-piston-bad-side.jpg
I still wonder why the guy who put the engine together in the factory didn't spot this and sort it...

Rob

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