A Newbies Adventures in Maintenanceland!

do not remove valve guides from head,once the parts are all cleaned up take them to a bike shop tohave them checked

CoreyClough wrote:

You'll get some good advice from members here.

You have the head off, so I'd send it out to have it rebuilt, with new valve stem seals. APE in CA rebuilt a head of mine, and it's working excellent. I'd highly recommend them.

Depending if there not are any grooves in the cylinders, you could do with a good cleaning up of them(ball hone), and new piston rings.

Rust on the rods I see there? :blink:

How many miles on this engine?

Thats my camera being stupid there is no rust on the connecting rods, everything in there looks brand new...just the pistons and combustion chambers look like poo. I would send it away, but that is monetarily out of reach at the moment. This was supposed to be a valve adjustment and new head gasket...not it looks more like an engine rebuild! As such I have to do things myself.

any dirty work you can do yourself will save money at machine shop

PLUMMEN wrote:

do not remove valve guides from head,once the parts are all cleaned up take them to a bike shop tohave them checked

Cool, I am going to take the head apart in a couple of days (I have to stay home tonight and make the wife think I like spending time with her). Only thing I am nervous about with having a tech measure my parts is that he will tell me that they are no good and that I have to buy more even if they are fine...there is a guy locally that knows these old bikes well, but I think in the off season he is going to try to shake me down. Is measuring the tolerances myself not a good idea? If I have the head apart would replacing the valve seals by default be a good idea?

I am thinking I will take apart the head, measure everything, get the tech to hone the bores, and assu,ming nothing needs replacing I just rebuild it with new rings and valve seals...sound reasonable?

Well bless my heart, that 50$ top end gasket set from Z1 has everything I am going to need...plus the valve cover breather gaskets that I don't need cause I'm a crazy canuck!

my ultra cheap technique for checking guides is to wire wheel the valves and stems.then shove the back in valve guide maybe 1/2-3/4 the way and try rocking side to side,if the move noticably its time for guides.if they check out ok id atleast have a valve job done and install new seals,remember if guidesare bad valves will not sit flat on seats wasting the valve job.

Ask & you shall receive....

Out of my KZ1000/1100 manual... Should be ~ the same!

One more thing before I get back to work, how to I clean around where the base gasket goes without getting crap into the crankcase? if some crud does get in there how does one get it out? I was thinking taking a squirt bottle with some seafoam or something and mounting the motor ontop of a bucket with a coffee filter. I would then sqirt inside the crankcase and hopefully flush anything out of the case into the coffee filter and bucket, that way I could recycle the seafom and not go through too much...sound dumb?

if the bores/pistons are in spec you should be fine just honing reringing it,ive got a bad feeling looking at the pistons though

PLUMMEN wrote:

my ultra cheap technique for checking guides is to wire wheel the valves and stems.then shove the back in valve guide maybe 1/2-3/4 the way and try rocking side to side,if the move noticably its time for guides.if they check out ok id atleast have a valve job done and install new seals,remember if guidesare bad valves will not sit flat on seats wasting the valve job.

OK, dumb nube question here...what exactly is a "valve job"

Old Man Rock wrote:

Ask & you shall receive....

Out of my KZ1000/1100 manual... Should be ~ the same!

I was looking at that too, but I don't think the popsicle stick or whatever they are using in the pic would clean off my carbon, it's hard as a rock!

PLUMMEN wrote:

if the bores/pistons are in spec you should be fine just honing reringing it,ive got a bad feeling looking at the pistons though

damn, you're scaring me now!