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I'd go with replacing the heads with used. $1000 is a bit much to me and I've seen heads pretty cheap on eBay. It would probably be cheaper than trying to have a shop repair the heads you have. Why not contact some of the salvage yards listed on the forum?

If you decide to replace the engine, they can be found fairly cheaply. I saw a GL1100 engine on ebay that had no bids at a starting price of $399. If you pull your old engine you'll pretty well know how install a replacement. That might be an okay way to go, then you could sell off parts of your old engine to reduce the cost. The one I saw came with a starter so there's about 90-100 dollars you could recover.

 

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Lone Star wrote:

I wouldn't bid on these heads.Look atthe 2nd to last picture, this head has been overheated. Notice that all the carbon deposits have been washed away in one of the combustion chambers by a coolant leak into the cylinder. They are likely cracked or warped as well, but they definitley blew the head gasket on that side.

I also would take a chance on doing the heads. I'd be very suprised if those valves did any damage to anything. Valve stems bend very easily, they didn't stand a chance against those pistons.

Good luck

Keith

I'd agree with you, the exhaust valves look like they've been awfully hot, I'd bet this engine has been run pretty lean for a good long time.

 

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If the valves aren't seating what's the alternative? New valves or a grind and lap?

 

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I'd still go with used heads, these engines usually don't have problems and if you can buy a pair of heads cheaply the only other thing you'd need would be a head gaskets and may as well put on new stem seals. Hunt on eBay, there's lots of people parting bikes out and most of them are honest. Many will send you extra pictures if you need more to determine the condition. You can also post the item number of the heads you're looking at here and we can all help you take a look.

With eight valves bent the chances of valve train damage is pretty high, the cam, rockers, rocker shaft and all have been subjected to very high stress. If you're going to reuse all that you really need to disassemble all of it for inspection and testing for bending or cracking. When a fast moving piston drives the valve back into the rockers it's much like hitting the valve stem with a sledge hammer it's a major trauma to everything that's involved.

 

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Different strokes, Coot. The Goldwing heads don't commonly warp and serious overheating is fairly rare so the odds are good that you could find decent used heads. Yeah I'd check them with a straight edge and feeler gauges before putting them on an engine but I'd be surprised to see a really bad pair. Valve guides and stems usually hold up for well over 100,000 miles so it's likely you wouldn't have a problem there. Replacing the stem seal is a good idea since they do deteriorate with age and some models have had seal problems. Most of the bikes being parted out on eBay and other places isn't because of major engine problems, it's because people who are willing to work on them or hunt parts are more scarce than bikes that need a little TLC. Not to mention that most bikes bring more in parts than whole.

I'd bet a pretty penny that you could put any decent looking set of heads on and and the engine would run trouble free for thousands of miles. These engines aren't hard pushed aircooled mills that run at extreme temperatures with light weight thin castings but some pretty robust machines. Kinda like Cadillac Sedan Devilles, you don't find a lot of them that have been worked hard.

Each of us has a different way to do things, I haven't had an engine I've rebuild on anything fail or perform poorly, there's more than one philosophy and I'll stick with what's worked for me for a lot of years.