Alert Indian welding quality- flywheel goes kaboom.

[kostean]

Well, a nice end to the racing season- 9 laps at the second position and then 1 corner before the finish line the bike shuts down with an awful noise so my kid literally pushes the bike over the finish line for the last 50m. Damn Yamahas claim another 2nd position due to KTM inability to last until the race end.

Dismantling the engine you can see the content below- what a shitty welding work done there where literally 1/3rd of the welds intended to support the fixing rives are not even welded metal together and the remaining ones are less than adequate for a rotor going 10k RPM.

So word of warning, at racing use at lest, this part should better be over-welded by professional with TIG.

 

[kostean]

Well, I was unaware of that one before, but apparently, the flywheel of 390 is another prone for catastrophic failure item- seems mine was not the first one to separate.
https://netrider.net.au/threads/ktm-390-duke-flywheel-came-off.232261/

 

[Superpacman13]

Ive seen some wild failures but that is new to me. Sorry to see it happen, its a very frustrating bike but when its right its the best one on the grid!

 

[kostean]

Let's see. Setting aside the weak top-end I have hardly needed to deal with the bottom end of the engine. After a complete head rebuild before the season (new valve seats, valves, and machining) plus replacing the head bolts with hard alloy studs, the thing actually hold together the whole season. So if i would in overall eliminate all troubles with the leaking head gaskets that the bike has had, I think the average reliability of this engine would not be that bad.

@Superpacman13 - how it is with this new Austrian head with fire ring, can this be used with the thin head gasket?
I would probably make with this improved head another attempt, as with the old style head, the thin gasket hold only something like 2 hours of track time. As I installed it with a machined head, it might of course have been that the compression already got to be too high for this setup so I went back to the OEM one and "convinced" it to hold by daring to torque the head nuts on top of the engine case glued studs with some "bit" over the speck figures (82Nm). ).

 

[Superpacman13]

Let's see. Setting aside the weak top-end I have hardly needed to deal with the bottom end of the engine. After a complete head rebuild before the season (new valve seats, valves, and machining) plus replacing the head bolts with hard alloy studs, the thing actually hold together the whole season. So if i would in overall eliminate all troubles with the leaking head gaskets that the bike has had, I think the average reliability of this engine would not be that bad.

@Superpacman13 - how it is with this new Austrian head with fire ring, can this be used with the thin head gasket?
I would probably make with this improved head another attempt, as with the old style head, the thin gasket hold only something like 2 hours of track time. As I installed it with a machined head, it might of course have been that the compression already got to be too high for this setup so I went back to the OEM one and "convinced" it to hold by daring to torque the head nuts on top of the engine case glued studs with some "bit" over the speck figures (82Nm). ).

The fire ring makes it so it doesn't matter what generation of head you have, its a fix to the head gaskets full stop. The compression also will not effect it as far as blowing the head gasket goes but be aware that the combustion chamber design is extremely prone to detonation on the exhaust side and does not appreciate any added timing while using "pump" gas (92 RON). Another thing to be aware if building these motors is that the OEM head bolts are not the most consistent and while using a click type torque wrench you may not be torqueing it down much at all. I use a dial indicator type wrench and hold the stock value to allow the bolt to fully stretch, some never hold full torque and they go in the fuckit bucket.

 

[Formula390]

Ditto what PacMan says. I've seen weld failures on these bikes, that that's a totally new one. Shitty welding to be sure! I would drop that on the desk of your sales and service manager and tell them you'd like to talk to them about replacement parts. It's clear as day that's a manufacturing defect if I've ever seen one!

 

[musti]

@kostean
I understand welding is an issue, and this is a small bike. High revs can cause damage. But why have a bigoted title? Why specifically quote "Indian welding quality"? That's disrespect man!
You could've just said "Bad welding quality"

 

[Formula390]

@kostean
I understand welding is an issue, and this is a small bike. High revs can cause damage. But why have a bigoted title? Why specifically quote "Indian welding quality"? That's disrespect man!
You could've just said "Bad welding quality"

I think it's because this is a consistent issue on the bike. I had several welds on my frame which, if I ever tried to turn in a part or did work for a customer with welds that looked like they do, I'd be fired or soon find myself without customers.

For my steering damper kit, I had to make the top frame clamp able to be ground away if needed. This is because many bikes the frame neck for the triple has welds SO ugly it's ridiculous.

We don't see welds like this on Japanese bikes. Or US bikes. Or European bikes. We do see them, regularly, in Indian made bikes.

 

[musti]

I think it's because this is a consistent issue on the bike. I had several welds on my frame which, if I ever tried to turn in a part or did work for a customer with welds that looked like they do, I'd be fired or soon find myself without customers.

For my steering damper kit, I had to make the top frame clamp able to be ground away if needed. This is because many bikes the frame neck for the triple has welds SO ugly it's ridiculous.

We don't see welds like this on Japanese bikes. Or US bikes. Or European bikes. We do see them, regularly, in Indian made bikes.

If you don't like the welds, then don't buy Indian made bikes then... Your are not forced to buy them. If you don't like something then why buy it and disrespect the country?

Welds are not made buy the country. It's by the manufacturers and their employees. Also FYI, it goes through quality inspection as well. So if they say okay, that means it has cleared their tech spec. If you don't like it, don't buy it.

There are many bad products from United States of America as well, but we don't go about disrespecting the country. We just don't buy it.

 

[musti]

All I'm saying here is don't quote India. Rather this is a KTM forum, and KTM made products, so lets stick with the brand and the manufacturer. Don't disrespect the country.

 

[musti]

@Admin I have a humble request to please ask the owner of the thread to remove my country's name from the thread, as it is found to be offensive and disrespectful.
If there is any problem with a product or brand, please highlight the name of the brand or that product.
There is no need to talk bad about a country.

Thank you.

 

[albatross_nlv]

I would not say it's a KTM problem as much as it is Bajaj motors problem. Don't ever see these issues on Austrian made KTM motorcycles, only the dukes and RCs. If I knew about these issues I would not have ever bought this bike. I know Bajaj owns the biggest stake of KTM. But it's just a rebranded motorcycle in my opinion.
Sure, KTM has their own problems when it comes to Austrian made bikes, but at least it's not a whole pile of problems. I bought mine because of the brand name, I began with dirt bikes and my buddies had some sick bikes. I couldn't ride dirt no more so chose to buy a street bike. One hell of a lesson to look into what I'm buying instead of trusting anything.
Also, I am currently actively trying to get rid of my RC 390 so yeah, I wouldn't have bought it in the first place if I knew anything about it except for trusting the brand name.

 

[musti]

I would not say it's a KTM problem as much as it is Bajaj motors problem. Don't ever see these issues on Austrian made KTM motorcycles, only the dukes and RCs. If I knew about these issues I would not have ever bought this bike. I know Bajaj owns the biggest stake of KTM. But it's just a rebranded motorcycle in my opinion.
Sure, KTM has their own problems when it comes to Austrian made bikes, but at least it's not a whole pile of problems. I bought mine because of the brand name, I began with dirt bikes and my buddies had some sick bikes. I couldn't ride dirt no more so chose to buy a street bike. One hell of a lesson to look into what I'm buying instead of trusting anything.
Also, I am currently actively trying to get rid of my RC 390 so yeah, I wouldn't have bought it in the first place if I knew anything about it except for trusting the brand name.

@albatross_nlv Thanks for sharing your experience with this bike and brand and sorry to hear about it.
But if you live in America, and if you want to ride this bike on the street, any dumb person would know that they should not go with a single cylinder, considering the speeds and roads conditions. You always want to go with more than 1. Your dirt bike riding experience should've given you that idea.
When I was in Texas, I never made a dumb decision to buy a single. I myself had a 2005 GXSR 600.
You should probably sell it and get a bike with more than 1 cylinder.
Cheers.