Why Honda CRF Crankcases Break (Dealer Won't Tell You This)

All right, we are back. This time we are trying to solve a mystery. Recently I purchased the 2021 CRF450 and the reason why I bought that bike to prove a point which is the Japanese can be just as bad as the KTM, the Austrian engineer. I get a lot of heat because I keep saying German engineering and not Austrian engineering, but the point is the Japanese bike can be just as bad as the KTM as far as things getting sideways. In this engine the crankcase is broken and we're going to try to find out why is the crankcase broke. So when I went to pick up this 450 from a gentleman, he ended up starting it up for a few seconds and as soon as he started up it died right after that and it made a terrible sound. So I said this would be good for me to fix it and I didn't really know what I might get into it, I'll be honest with you. I saw the crankcase was broken but I said well yeah I could take the challenge and I ended up taking the engine apart so now I know why the crankcase is broken. I think I know why the crankcase is broken. I have a theory which I'm going to share with you. I also looked up the social media online platforms and I found a lot of people have these problems. Surprisingly we never heard of it or at least I never heard of because the Honda guys are so enthusiastic. Even when they're talking about the crankcase is broken they're not talking about it the same way as the KTM guys are talking about it. They are much nicer, they have a very nice tone. So I ended up picking up the bike for $2,100 and I think I made a good deal. I didn't really care how bad it sounds like, it's a good project for me no matter what. I saw online people talking about just the labor cost, it was like $2,600. That's how much the dealer tried to fix the bike plus the parts. The parts on my end it cost $840. That's including the seals, pretty much everything, even really the unnecessary items. Just make sure the bike performs the way it's supposed to be. So I'm going to be replacing a bunch of seals, gears, bearings, you know a bunch of stuff. But anyway $840 that's where I'm at right now. And then my labor cost which is pretty much I look at it like a farm project so I'm willing to do it for free. And the gentleman told me he worked on it. He one obvious reason when we're saying he worked on it is he actually put that two compound glue on it. I cannot remember what it's called. But he tried to glue the crankcase. And the second thing he tried to do is replacing the one-way clutch, which he actually did because he thought that's the problem. So he replaced the clutch and when he started the engine still sounded terrible and it was just barely managed to start it up. So obviously that two one-way clutch didn't fix the problem. What he think it did. Even I looked at the one-way clutch and it didn't look good at all. So I really appreciate him to spending like $380 to replace that. On the other hand, when I took the engine case apart, I found quite a lot of wear on the starter motor plus the gear that's connected to the starter motor. And in my theory, the reason why the engine failed because the starter motor gear wear out and it jumped a gear like it didn't follow the gear path. It just actually jumped one and that's what opened the crankcase up. Because nothing else wrong with it other than that part. And when I moved the engine, it was still cracking. It just didn't feel right. And the starter gear plus the starter motor has an extremely large amount of wear on it. I screwed up. I told you too early what's wrong with the bike. And I also told you too early what causes the problem. And unfortunately, that didn't satisfy YouTube algorithm because we just didn't spend enough time together to satisfy that famous YouTube algorithm. What I'm going to do to make it right, I'm going to add a little clip on the end. And the clip is about me taking the engine apart. I kind of like that. It puts me in the mood. You just listen to the tools. Not much really else going on. Really just taking the engine apart and finding out what causes the problem as it goes. So you actually going to see that in real time. What the... You