KTM/HUSKY head work - shop suggestions

Unfortunately my 2019 701SM has experienced some head damage (broken rocker arm, melted retainer, damaged camshaft).

It’s currently at The Motor Cafe in Campbell and i just want to make sure it’s in good hands and not overly priced ($3900 after parts, labor, and taxes ).

Anyone deal with them before or can recommend a good shop/mechanic?

THANKS!

EDCO up in Petaluma does extensive head repairs

Mad

FYI, that's Engine Dynamics

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Thanks much. Will call them in the morning if they are open.

Is $3900 absurd?

Yeah that does sound steep for that bike after looking at oem prices. Let us know what happens. I love the 701!

augustiron said:

FYI, that's Engine Dynamics

/Thread

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Oops! You're correct. Had a Brain Fart.

Mad

Before anyone can say whether $3,900 is a good or bad price for something, we need to look at the scope of work that is included for that cost.

I had EDCO hone a new cylinder bank for a crossplane R1 engine I was rebuilding. They did good work but I have no basis for an opinion on the rest of the services they offer.

Fyi when my ancient KTM supermoto blew up its top end I sourced a cylinder head/valve cover (c/o a barfer--they were matched sets on that model) and swapped it onto the damaged engine.

After replacing the cam chain/sprocket, camshaft, water pump (on end of camshaft), head gasket, and making sure no shavings got sucked up in the oil pumps, bike fired right up and was back to commuting and hooning at full power. Total cost: way under a grand.

If you're not comfortable with this level of work, MotoGuild on Treasure Island is where you want to go to learn how to work on your own machine (if they still exist). Fyi their location is a warehouse where they can open doors and get some decent ventilation. With an N95 you'd *probably* be fine for Covid safety. Your call though.

The right thing to do of course is use a valve spring compressor to take apart a used cylinder head and use a micrometer to make sure the valves, seats, and camshaft/lobes are all still within spec. Or you could just roll the dice and install it.

Your engine may have suffered damage elsewhere with shrapnel and metal shavings flying around internally, so no guarantee a swap will work. However, even a full donor engine swap would be quicker and cheaper than you were quoted (there are two on ebay) if you did the work yourself.

Fyi #2: there is a 701 cylinder head for sale via ebay Australia for about $500 shipped.

Good luck!

I’m grateful for all your replies and insight. Thank you.
The thought of just swapping the whole engine out for an ebay one did cross my mind. This might be a good option but i won’t have time for it until the winter.
I’m mechanically inclined but getting into head work does intimidate me, mainly for the need to research procedures, specs, and tools. The bay is too far for me to wrench on it but thank you for the guild suggestion.
I hardly got to enjoy the bike but it was absolutely one of the most fun bikes i’ve ridden and now i’m unsure what to do.
Another option is to sell if for maybe $7000 if someone here with time and know-how feel that’s a good deal.
Otherwise i’ll update this as i decide what to do.

looks like similar running bikes are ~9-10k. I don't think you're getting $7k for one that needs an engine rebuild. i'm a cheapskate tho

i'm assuming the $3900 number included all the labor for motor cafe. i don't know how many hours that is but i'd assume it's 10-15 easy, at i dunno, $100/hr that leaves a lot of room to get some tools and be your own general contractor so to speak

Again, if you want to sell it, a buyer would want to know exactly what happened, what state it is currently in and what the shop estimate for parts and labor to fix are...
$7k could be spot on, absurd or a steal, I don't know....

General rule of thumb: the OEM brand dealership is usually the most expensive route to go, but sometimes the best, especially for resale value if major engine work was done on a newer bike. More buyers will be comfortable with that unless the dealership has a bad reputation.

Second most expensive is usually independent shops. Again, quality and reputation vary.

Least expensive is DIY, but also the worst for resale in a newer bike with major engine work because a buyer is trusting a non-pro mechanic for major work.

I DIY 98% of any bike work but I have years of self taught experience building bikes and engines. That said, if a head needs "work" I send it to Engine Dynamics and let them deal with it. I just R&R it.
They have measuring and machining tools I don't. And skills beyond where I care to grow as you need lots of expensive tools to do it.

Sucks your bike got hurt. Hard to choose the right path as there are several viable options that depend on your wallet size, skills, tools, time and plans for the bike.

I'd also reach out to Lucytriple here in BARF, a kickass Indy mechanic.

Also, an official dealer is most likely to just replace stuff with new vs. spending time carefully measuring to see if the old part(s) are OK to reuse. It is faster, more profit for them, and less chance the repair has an issue once back to the customer.

There is a lot of good in that for you too ... fixed right and once kind of thing ... only down side is lots of $$$$.

With the engine swap approach ... I never understood how you really know the state of the used engine you are buying. If the donor bike was crashed, and had 2000 miles on it, I guess pretty good assumption the motor (if not damaged in crash) is all in good shape. But if the bike was totaled and had 15K miles? or 12k miles?

One approach with these is ... quickly buy the best used motor you can find and swap the motor out ... back up and running in shorter time period. Then, in your spare time, dig into your original motor and do most of that work yourself. You learn, and save money, and once done you can swap out the engine again, and sell the donor engine you bought. Or have 2 engines for next time.

Good luck. No easy or cheap choices here.

There are a number of sources for engines with a short warranty. Check Ebay. It almost always more expensive to rebuild a blown engine. Except a single cyl or 2 stroke and then it’s YMMV.

I had my top end rebuilt under warranty for $3200 and bottom end, 2k miles later, for $4800... you're in the range. These bikes drink oil almost as fast as gas and gas almost as fast as cash....

Jesus. I know they are bad ass but.....but this is why I stay clear of the big KTM’s. They make Ducati’s seem reliable.

The 790/890/1290's haven't been plagued by nearly as many issues as the 690 motor. I keep an eye on a couple forums so that I know what to be mindful of and I rarely see major issues on the 7/890 sections. Unfortunately, the one area ALL (street, at least) KTMs seem to have issues is countershaft seals. Had them replaced twice on my 701 and once at 3k miles on my 890. Other than that and a seepy valve gasket, my 890 has been problem free, so far. That said, after my numerous bad experiences with the 701, I opted for the 5 year 0 deductible warranty on the 890 when I bought it new.

cg_ops said:

The 790/890/1290's haven't been plagued by nearly as many issues as the 690 motor. I keep an eye on a couple forums so that I know what to be mindful of and I rarely see major issues on the 7/890 sections. Unfortunately, the one area ALL (street, at least) KTMs seem to have issues is countershaft seals. Had them replaced twice on my 701 and once at 3k miles on my 890. Other than that and a seepy valve gasket, my 890 has been problem free, so far. That said, after my numerous bad experiences with the 701, I opted for the 5 year 0 deductible warranty on the 890 when I bought it new.

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I've actually found the 701/690 LC4 platform to be fairly reliable. I know it burns oil, which I find unfortunate, but in my experience and all my friends experiences, plus the tens of hours of research I've done online in forums and groups, they seem to be quite reliable with regular maintenance. (Granted, this is mostly based on the updated LC4 motor with the second counterbalancer.)

I do know the 790/890s have been plagued with a weepy valve cover gasket ever since the bike was introduced. I think the 1290s are pretty rock solid at this point, especially since the LC8 has been refined over so many years.

And then the one issue KTM wide is the clutch slave cylinder going out.


OP, very curious - any idea/hypotheses on what caused the engine damage? Haven't heard of catastrophic failure like this too often - although cg_ops, I did read your cautionary tale of owning a 701 before I bought mine and that always sticks in my mind.

Again, thank you all for sharing - Lots of good food for thought.
Btw, the $3900 included parts and labor and the bike only has 7xx miles!

Update:
My interactions with the service manager at Motor Cafe have been very positive, which helps instil confidence.
Their tech dug deeper and the conclusion as of now is there’s a simple ball and spring checkvalve that failed. Metal from it went downstream and blocked oil flow to the head which overheated, melted the plastic retainer clip, scorched (is that the right word?) the cam, and broke a rocker arm.
Another weird and unrelated thing they discovered is the cam chain tensioner was installed backwards.

The bike is basically oem other than crash protection and extremely low miles. And so, he was very sympathetic to « my pain » and recommended we try to work with Husqvarna (despite being out of warranty) seeing as how this was clearly a non rider nor owner induced failure.
Husqvarna called me back immediately and have opened a case. Will keep you all posted. Maybe they’ll split the bill with me. Regardless, i do appreciate everyone (Motor Cafe, Husky, and you ) for taking their time.

If this bike is fixed for a reasonable cost, i’m still extremely tempted to keep it because it was in fact that much fun to ride and despite this experience, i’ve heard of long lasting engines overall.
Feel free to give me your 2 cents. Keep and give it a second chance, or go the 500exc route, with two sets of wheels.

FWIW, I think a lot of the issues come down to poor QC/assembly-line consistency, not necessarily bad parts. I had several screws/bolts rattle loose within the first 500 miles on both bikes:

890
- Both tank screws backed out (the screw just above the techspec tank grip)
- The top 2 bolts on the stator cover were loose enough to remove with my hand (the two visible in the pic above, discovered while installing the CF case cover)
- The two bolts holding the rear brake cylinder were loose as well (9 o'clock to the CF clutch cover, above the massive bolt holding the rearset)

701
- The screws holding the front blinker housings nearly backed all the way out
- The screws/bolts securing the OEM exhaust were all loose, letting it shift outwards so that the first time a passenger rode pillion their boot pressed the fender into the pipe (another angle)
- The glue/adhesive that (should) holds the led housing in the dash wasn't done properly, which resulted in them backing out of the housing and letting water in, eventually shorting out the dash
- There wasn't enough/proper adhesive on the original seat decals. (Not as much a "bad installation" issue but was still annoying) The replacement seat had no stickers to fall off... and didn't feel like a slip-n-slide
- Bonus pic of my fuzzy magnetic drain bolt after the 2nd oil change, at 3k miles. From what the tech figured, the head gasket came from the factory was likely installed with a small kink/tear, which contributed to the downstream issues to the top/bottom end, largely due to overheating as a result of loss of coolant. At >half throttle the cylinder would leaking, over-pressurizing the coolant system, forcing coolant into the reservoir and then out the overflow tube.

If the motor is rebuilt by a very competent tech, I don't think it would continue to have issues. I'm no expert, so this is very anecdotal.

Understood. It’s almost as if getting a mid mileage bike would have been a safer bet.